


The Stars Are Hiding

by superheroresin



Series: Something Wild Calls You Home [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Anthropomorphic, Bucky/Brock - Freeform, Cat Bucky Barnes, Cat/Human Hybrids, Conspiracy, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-romantic Bucky/Brock, Politics, Urban Fantasy, Xenobiology, hate!sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:21:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superheroresin/pseuds/superheroresin
Summary: More than once Steve had to choke down a laugh, and suddenly there was a bond there that went beyond the respect of mutually surviving fifty pounds of unexploded ordinance designed to kill Americans.It was a subtle relationship—Bucky was still a humanoid feline after all—but one that helped make Sakhalin home along with the molten sunrises, the sound of the sea, and the scent of herring before the season’s first snow storm.





	1. Heat

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [The Stars Are Hiding](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709343) by [HoneyLeo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyLeo/pseuds/HoneyLeo)



> DISCLAIMER:   
> I didn't know how to tag for this, so I'd like to include a disclaimer here that this setting deals with drastically altered political history which leads to different relations between nations in the present. This is not meant to be judgment or commentary on real-world politics, but just different circumstances that affect the plot throughout the series. The main countries discussed are Russia, China, Japan and the United States.
> 
> \---  
> The Army sure does love their acronyms! Here are a few common ones that will pop up in this series: 
> 
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation
> 
> F-[rank]: Unlike human personnel, humanoid feline ranks are only on a numerical scale which indicates seniority. Some have special operational disciplines, but that is attached to their designation as an SCF rather than their actual rank. For example, SCF-H indicates a hunter operational discipline. Brock and Bucky are referred to as "sergeants" but this is more of an honorific title than an actual rank.
> 
> Human ranks follow the same structure as the current United States Army (lol it's so complicated.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Army sure does love their acronyms! Here are a few common ones that will pop up in this series:
> 
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation
> 
> F-[rank]: Unlike human personnel, humanoid feline ranks are only on a numerical scale which indicates seniority. Some have special operational disciplines, but that is attached to their designation as an SCF rather than their actual rank. For example, SCF-H indicates a hunter operational discipline. Brock and Bucky are referred to as "sergeants" but this is more of an honorific title than an actual rank.
> 
> Human ranks follow the same structure as the current United States Army (lol it's so complicated.)

Bucky wakes up to a sticky mess in his shorts and a throbbing headache. He’s hot and sweating despite the crisp, pre-dawn air, and his breath feels thick and heavy in his chest. His vision is hyperfocused around the edges, sharp to the point of pain, and he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, hoping for relief. He sucks in a few deep breaths through his nose, and that’s when he smells it.

“Oh, shit,” he whispers, when the spark of realization breaks through his drowsy haze. The feline barracks is overflowing with cats—too many in too close quarters. Not only are all the bunks full, but sleeping bags stretch from one end of the floor to the other. Many resorted to curling up on top of trunks and fought for space in the wide block of the window sill. “Shit, shit, shit,” Bucky mouths to himself, trying to wipe the sweat off his face, like that could do anything about to the needy stink oozing from his pores. It made sense that at least one cat would get pushed out of season by the situation, but why did it have to be him?

He wants to scream, or fight someone, or just notify his CO so the Army could ship him off to the CFC. Bucky shivers and seals his blanket across his shoulders, now fully awake after thinking about his annual visits to the Center of Feline Control. Would the Army assign another Soldier Companion Feline to his CO? The most dangerous operation he’s ever been a part of was coming up in just a few days, and as a SCF-H it was his job to make sure the human Captain survived it.

Captain Rogers certainly acted the part of a perfect soldier, a GI Joe sprung to life. He sounded just as plastic as his action figure compatriots when he chewed through speeches about honor and duty while Bucky tried to turn his ears off. It didn’t take long before Bucky realized that there was loyalty behind that arrogance and caution behind the cluelessness. Rogers never jumped to judgement without a good reason, and stuck up for his commandos no matter the cost—and Bucky had seen it cost him. Despite that the man could be thick as a brick when it came to his own safety and twice as blind.

Two years ago, when Bucky was reclassified from spotter duty after an incident with a missing sniper rifle, he pulled down the most dangerous occupation a feline in the United States Army could be assigned. _Hunter duty_ was basically a fancy phrase for _feline shield,_ but Bucky figured it was a good a job as any for a cat with his history. He doubled down on his commitment after he found out that it was Rogers who gave him that second chance.

The captain broke the mold in more ways than one, he found.

Bucky considers this as he thinks over the protocol he’s breaching by not turning himself over. It doesn’t take much for him to settle on “fuck it.” Bucky was sure Captain Rogers would be dead four times over by now if he hadn’t been there to watch his overly large back and the upcoming operation is too important to leave the hapless human unprotected just because Bucky doesn’t have anywhere to stick his dick. Besides, if Rogers got hurt in his absence it’d be Bucky’s fault.

That thought makes something stubborn crawl into Bucky’s chest and dig in for the long haul. The training would only last a few more days, and once the op was executed the expeditionary force would leave. Things would go back to normal, he tells himself.

Of course right now he has to deal with the salty tang rising from where he came all over the inside of his boxers and he’ll have to do something soon with his rapidly recovering erection. He carefully turns over in his bunk and gazes out across the barracks, considering his options.

As awkward as it might be, any number from his own squad would mate with him. Maybe not Dumdum, but only because he suspects Dumdum was actually in love with the queen he mated with when he was in season. Dernier or Jonesy, or even Morita would definitely help him out. The only problem is that they were all below his rank—just like almost every other cat on base. Getting caught would see them both looking down the barrel of _misuse of chain of command_ and _feline delinquency._ Bucky closes his eyes tightly, feeling the phantom pain crawl along the scar he still carries from the last time he earned a physical reprimand for his infraction with the rifle.

Protecting his team meant he had only one option, and it was snoring carelessly in the bunk right above his own. The only other feline of an F-5 rank at the outpost was also the only other feline of an F-5 rank that Bucky outright fucking hated. Brock was in command of the SCFs from Strike, the expeditionary force that arrived at the outpost on Sakhalin three days ago. They challenge one another constantly on everything from SCF assignments to basic camp ops and auxiliary duties. Captain Rogers had to get involved more than once to push for Bucky’s suggestions. Brock might be older, but Bucky has been on Sakhalin for years, and lead dozens of successful operations against the RNS. He knows the terrain better than _anyone,_ and Captain Rogers has better things to do than settle disputes between their force’s felines.

As a teammate Brock is fucking _insufferable_ but as a fellow SCF F-5, Bucky has no choice but to deal with his posturing and backstabbing.

And the arrogant way he tucks his thumbs into his utility harness.

And how he plants his feet during briefings.

And how he generally insists on coordinating efforts between Strike and the Howlies like a stubborn jackass.

Bucky’s mouth twists in disgust and his ears lay back at the thought of trying to sink his teeth into the sergeant’s scruff. It just wouldn't work. Brock is too arrogant, too pushy. He’s nearly just as big as Bucky with a broader chest and a neck like a tank. Bucky isn’t interested in a mate he’d have to constantly fight to dominate. F-5 or not, Brock was probably a potential mate that Bucky should avoid most of all. That kind of personality friction could cause just as many issues as Bucky’s heat.

Ugh, _friction._ Bucky’s cock twitches and his hips inadvertently push into the mattress, seeking it out as the thought manifests into a painfully erotic fantasy. He shoves away his blankets, careful to avoid unleashing his potent scent into the room all at once. He pulls in a deep, frustrated breath, filtered by his flattened pillow.

Celibacy it is.

First thing’s first, Bucky has to wash off the semen and heat sweat, and maybe stand in the sub zero temperatures outside to cool his steaming hot skin. He cranes his neck around the edge of the bunk and sees it’s only 0240. The outpost is on lockdown at this time of night, and sneaking out to the showers could get him written up for breaking curfew. Bucky’s hips twinge again, and his cock is now so hard it hurts when he pushes it into his mattress. He nips at his own bottom lip to stifle the whimper.

In order to reach the showers he has to make his way through a minefield between him and the doors of the barracks, dozens of dark shapes curled into sleeping bags and tossing on the creaking mattresses of the installed bunks. He was surprised that the smell alone wasn’t enough to wake the cats closest to him.

“Shit,” Bucky sighs, and goes for it. He slithers out from the bed on all fours, his tail slicing the air behind him as he remains wholly silent. He pads through the sleepers like a ghost, and makes it all the way into the hall before his ears swing back to the room at the sound of rustling sheets. He quickly looks back to see Brock, leaning far over the edge of his bed to peer into Bucky’s empty bunk. Brock sniffs the air, his orange striped tail standing straight up in interest as he balances off the edge of his bunk. Something must alert Brock to Bucky’s stalled escape because he suddenly looks straight up into Bucky’s wide open eyes. Bucky sees the pale moonlight bounce off the long white teeth in Brock’s cheshire grin before he turns back into the hallway and quickly leaves the building.

He should _definitely_ avoid Brock, most of all.

Once outside the frigid air bites into his skin and steals his breath, but he already feels like he can see clearly again. All he’s wearing are shorts and an undershirt, and he clasps one hand over the tag hanging from his military issued collar as he crunches quietly over the frosted dirt path in his boots. He’s still so hot that the pinpricks of snow sticking to his clammy skin are a relief, and doesn’t mind taking his time to avoid the lazily swinging security lights and chilly human guards, too miserable in the cold to notice him slip around their patrol routes. The cold showers call him like a siren song, and he hopes his internal temperature will dip low enough so he doesn’t sweat as much when he gets back to bed.

Bucky has never seen the human’s showers, but the cat showers are pathetic, even for camp standards. The building itself was not much more than one long, low bungalow set on a bare slab of concrete. Bucky always has to duck in structures built just for cats, since the light fixtures and doorways are usually hung too low to accommodate his excessive height. The locker rooms to the cat’s bath house don’t even have a front door.

Bucky makes his way through the panels that serve as a privacy switchback into the showers and shudders when his bare feet touch the slick shower floors. He’s already shivering from the cold but the sweat continues pouring out of him as he makes his way to the back wall.

The water strikes him in the chest, the wall-mounted shower head set too low for him stand at his full height, but he doesn't care. The water is icy cold, so shocking he can't think of anything else for several minutes as he plants himself under the spray. After he can no longer feel his fingers and toes, Bucky adds a touch of heat and breathes in the steam like it could clean him from the inside out. He lathers up with soap and shampoo, taking extra care to scrub around his collar line to make sure the nylon fabric doesn’t hold onto too much of his scent. He rinses off, wrings the water from his tail, and returns to the locker room, scrubbed raw but pleasantly frosted over. His dogtag is a chip of ice, nestled in the dip of his throat where his collarbones meet, and he holds it in his hand to warm the metal as he towels off.

The smell of his shorts makes Bucky’s skin crawl and his undershirt is still wet from sweat so he tosses them into his laundry bag and gets dressed in the BDUs he keeps in his locker. He’s slept in his uniform after pulling double shifts before. The humans were never the wiser.

It’s only 0315 when he heads back, slipping quietly along the gravel path and around the guards one more time to make it safely back into the barracks. Wet fur makes the outside air even more frigid, and it clings to him like permafrost before he makes it back into the insulated building. At least he doesn’t still feel like he’s about to leap out of his own burning skin anymore, and even though he couldn’t feel the tip of his nose anymore, he couldn’t smell the pheromones either. Maybe the shower did the trick? He’s never been pushed out of season before, so maybe it hadn’t even been full blown heat that lit him on fire in his sleep. Maybe this was the end of it.

When he nudges open the door to the main bunk room inside the barracks, at least eight of the twenty-four cats are sitting up in their bedding, staring right at him with ears erect, eyes flashing in the darkness. It's like they were waiting for him, peering at the doorway in the pitch darkness, unwilling to move in case they wake the others and reveal the treasure in their midst. He even spots two lying on his bed, twisted in his blankets. Bucky gulps.

Maybe not.

He backs away from the door, like it was an IED trigger, and hopes the gentle clack of the metal latch doesn’t wake more of them. He paces inside the entryway of the barracks, where a small office space is set up for him and Brock. His tail aches from the cold, and even though he had been trying so hard to cool off, he had been looking forward to rolling up in his blanket and getting back to sleep under its comforting weight. Bucky drops against the wall behind his own desk with a sharp intake of breath. He can’t break curfew and wander the base so early in the morning, and he can’t possibly go back inside the main room either.

He’s fucking trapped.

Bucky slides to the floor in his uniform and touches his forehead to the tops of his knees. Just a few more days until the mission. Just a few more days until Brock takes his Strike SCFs and gets the fuck off his island. If he can’t protect his CO he has no business being an SCF. He could do this, he tells himself. Just a few more days.

Eventually he falls asleep with his wet, chilled tail wrapped around his ankles.


	2. How to Soldier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Easy reference glossary: 
> 
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation
> 
> F-[rank]: Unlike human personnel, humanoid feline ranks are only on a numerical scale which indicates seniority. Some have special operational disciplines, but that is attached to their designation as an SCF rather than their actual rank. For example, SCF-H indicates a hunter operational discipline. Brock and Bucky are referred to as "sergeants" but this is more of an honorific title than an actual rank.
> 
> Human ranks follow the same structure as the current United States Army (lol it's so complicated.)

Bucky fully expected being deployed in heat would be awful. He expected the constant arousal to be frustrating, expected to turn a few heads and expected the tension that caused with the Strike team. He does _not_ expect his very own Howling Commandos to lose their collective shit, and forget how to soldier. It’s like they suddenly lost sight of the difference between a dog tag and a cat license.

One single day in heat and he’s an inch away from confessing to Captain Roger that he’s unfit for active duty. As afraid as he is to leave Rogers exposed during the op, he starts to become far more concerned about his own cats after a full day of botched drills, distracted responses and rising aggression from both teams.

Not only had the barracks, showers, mess hall and even the latrines become tiny warzones between felines fighting for a bit of elbow room, but everywhere Bucky goes small fights and pointless disagreements break out, as if he dragged aggressiveness in his wake.

The cats are one stupid or disrespectful move away from earning themselves a physical reprimand or worse. These idiots could get themselves _discharged._ Being killed in action would be a blessing compared to—well, _whatever_ it was that awaited a combat trained, ungelded male cat on the outside. Bucky hopes he personally never finds out.

Bucky puts his fork down when he hears the beginning of a fight start behind him in the mess hall. It's better for everyone, he thinks, to just walk away now, instead of step in like he would have two days ago. He could get up slowly, pretend he doesn't want to eat anything after all. Who could blame him? F-1 Dernier from the Howlies curses something rude in French at F-4 Jack from Strike, and Bucky puts his face in his palm. Idiots.

The cat mess is really just a pavilion, with a cinderblock structure at one end for storage and utilities. Under the corrugated metal roof is a long smooth slab of cement where metal tables are planted with matching benches. There aren't enough to seat all the SCFs at once, and the humans wouldn’t let them eat in shifts, so here they all were. And yup, there goes another French insult murmured under Dernier’s breath.

Absolute, _fucking_ idiots.

Brock hisses something at Jack, before the younger cat could lunge entirely out of his seat at Dernier. Jack sets his shoulders and turns stiffly back to his meal, glaring across the tables at his tormentor’s smug grin. At least Brock is taking initiative for once. Bucky tries to go back to his au gratin potatoes (which he suspects is repurposed mac & cheese from the day before) and reminds himself to be careful with the amount of credit he gives the other sergeant.

At least the older, more experienced cat has some self control and Bucky counts it as a win that Brock seems immune to his new superpower to stupefy the others.

Bucky pockets his dubiously labeled “beef snack” and stands up to leave. Immediately, Jack and three others from Strike nearly jump out of their seats, followed by Denier and three others once that call to arms is made. Bucky halts, unsure of what to do, and gives Brock a helpless look. He doesn’t think any of them would actually cut out of their chow time early to follow him, but he can feel the situation teetering on a knife edge. It’s mostly testosterone fueled posturing but Bucky knows they are all inches away from a fight.

Brock’s ears give a disinterested flick, so Bucky scowls. “Anyone want latrine duty right after lunch? Looks like I have plenty of volunteers.”

Dernier slowly takes his seat and the others glance around, slightly confused as if they themselves didn’t understand what they were all standing around for in the first place. Jack clicks his tongue and shoots Dernier a dirty look before lowering himself back down and one by one the cats get back to their meal.

After Bucky is partway down the path, he hears the clang of what was undoubtedly a food tray being thrown to the floor and he quickens his pace. Brock’s unmistakable bellow quickly follows, and he can feel eyes on the back of his neck, crawling over his exposed skin, like he’s being hunted.

He refuses to turn around, lets it be Brock’s problem. All he wants is yet another fucking shower, and he wasn’t going to let those idiots get in the way. He'd been taking about three a day, all at odd hours to avoid any company because what a fucking disaster would that be? He must have been too angry or too distracted or just too damn in heat to notice he wound up with company anyway, and he spins on his heel when he hears the crunch of snow behind him. He has a growl on the tip of his tongue but only sputters when he sees it’s Captain Rogers.

“Bucky!” The human says a little bit too loudly. His lips and cheeks are pink from the cold and when he stops he folds his arms together for warmth, or to cover for how startled he was. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” Bucky swallows. Maybe Rogers already put two and two together. Humans are generally unconcerned with what their attached feline squad gets up to in between missions, but Rogers is high ranking enough to be responsible for personnel issues. It would be a fucking disaster if he got involved at this point. Bucky would have to explain to Rogers why he’d kept it hidden for so long, and he wasn’t sure how the human would take it if he admitted it was because he thought he’d get himself killed without Bucky watching his back. Maybe Bucky was just forgetting how to soldier, along with the rest of the squad.

“I need to talk to you about the cats—about the _felines,”_ he quickly corrects himself, as if he was trying not to offend him with slang. Rogers did that a lot, and it was just as awkward every time. “There seems to be a few, um, discipline issues lately. Is anything wrong?”

“No, sir.”

“You mean, you haven’t noticed the fighting lately? The insubordination? They all seem a bit distracted and I thought— ”

“Insubordination?” Bucky repeats, so shocked that he doesn’t realize he’s interrupted his commanding officer until it’s too late. “Sorry, sir.”

Confirmed: forgot to soldier.

“It’s okay. I asked F-1 Dernier a question and he just walked away, like he didn’t hear me. Had this look on his face like he was on drugs. I’ve just never seen someone from your team do something like that.”

“I’m sorry sir, I’ll speak with him about it,” Bucky says, so furious he can feel it in the tip of his tail. Dernier had been on his team for a year, and a good soldier. He’d call him a friend if cats really had friends. At least he trusted him more than most to have his back in the field. To walk away from a human captain without being dismissed would be dereliction of duty at best. If Rogers wanted to push it he could probably even get disobeying orders, and on Sakhalin that would be classified as misbehavior before the enemy. That was a capital crime for SCFs. “Would you like to file a formal complaint?”

“No! No, that’s not necessary,” Rogers looks uncomfortable, and Bucky can smell that he’s starting to nervously sweat under his thick coat. He clearly wants to ask more, but he seems to be struggling with how to speak to Bucky. As far as rank went, Rogers was miles above Bucky on the totem pole. An O-3 is so far out of Bucky’s reach he’d have to serve for his whole life just to be able to wear the same colored dress uniform. Besides, they had served together so many times before, there really was no reason for Rogers to be so nervous speaking to—

Bucky squints at the captain, suddenly suspicious. Humans weren’t susceptible to feline heat, though.

He was pretty sure.

Bucky pushes the thought away. The heat must just be making him paranoid.

“So, you haven’t noticed anything? Your team hasn’t been, I don’t know, riled up by any of the Strike guys?” He means humans, when he says the word _guys._

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir I noticed, but no, no one is riling us up. I’m truly sorry about F-1 Dernier, and I promise there will be disciplinary measures taken.” Bucky swallows when Rogers looks a little skeptical, so he tries to do better. “There... _was_ an issue with the cats being distracted but it’s been settled.”

“Has it?” Rogers says, and looks over his shoulder at the cat mess hall where things were just starting to quiet down. Bucky tries for an innocent smile, but he must have tried a bit too hard because the captain’s eyes go wide and he just says “Um,” and “right,” and doesn’t go away.

“Okay,” Rogers starts over, apparently finding his nerve. Would Bucky even be allowed to tell him no? He has no idea. “From one leader to another, I know it can be hard when a new, undisciplined team comes on board. I know your cats, and they’re all _great_ soldiers. But this Strike team—we’re even having trouble with some of their guys. Captain Ward is a total—” Rogers cuts himself off before he gets downright gossipy about his fellow captain, then pinches the bridge of his nose when he takes a breath. “Okay, that’s besides the point. Just please remember that if they are causing issues with your team you can report it to me. I think we can work something out on our own, without getting top brass involved.” Rogers gives him a meaningful look and Bucky nods, understanding.

Feline friendships may be rare and vague, but it doesn't mean there is no loyalty between them. Because no feline wants to watch another beaten by humans, it’s part of an unspoken code that they never report one another. It’s why Bucky doesn’t worry about one of the twenty three other cats snitching on him. Rogers seems to understand, and the knot of tension in his chest that tightened when the captain approached  loosens up. Mostly, it's just a huge fucking relief to know he didn’t flag him down to talk about sex.

“Yes sir. I appreciate it,” he says, and doesn’t bother hiding his cocky grin. “Brock’s squad is definitely a pain in my tail but I can handle them. Thank you for understanding. I’ll make sure to speak to him and make sure we get the cats in line.”

“Great,” Steve breathes out, awash with relief. “Actually, if you’re not busy I think we should go over the infiltration unit deployment one more time. Something isn’t setting right with me about where Captain Ward wants to set Strike’s snipers and I thought you should take a look since you’re such an experienced spotter. Unless,” Rogers backtracks, looking again at the mess hall and back to Bucky. “Did you already eat?”

He hadn’t had a chance, but that’s not the captain’s problem. Plus he has his very tasty ‘beef snack’ burning a hole in his pocket. “No, sir, but it’s fine. I was just heading to the showers,” he turns to fall into step with Rogers, happy enough to get away from the rest of the cats for the time being that his tail makes a pleased swish from side to side. “Twenty four of us on base and only six shower heads,” Bucky makes a small, cynical chuckle. “It’s nice to sneak in there when no one else is using them. I’m sure you know how that goes.”

Rogers smiles sheepishly. “Uh, I guess. The officer’s barracks has a separate shower.”

“Brr,” Bucky shivers, sending a tiny vibration down from the top of his ears to the tip of his tail. “That’s even worse, then.”

“How so?”

“You have to share it with Captain Ward,” Bucky answers, giving his head a small shake in solidarity at the horror of those conditions.

Captain Rogers stops in his tracks and Bucky takes half a second to question if he had just gone too far.

Fuck it.

He gives Rogers a wink before he keeps going past him, and only breathes a sigh of relief when he hears the human shout with laughter.

Rogers is pretty okay, for an officer.

For a human too, Bucky has to admit.

* * *

It hand't take long for Bucky to see why Captain Rogers was concerned about the sniper placement. They were far too close to the target, so Bucky suggested some alternative positions for three of them and the fourth could actually be positioned as lookout only. Spending some time at the command center, surrounded by human personnel, helped ease the tension in his gut and Bucky was able to focus on mission tactics without being distracted by his heat.

After that, Bucky had taken the time to meet with Brock and exchange a few sentences that hopefully passed for a meaningful conversation. At least Brock managed to hold his gaze without his eyes drifting down to Bucky’s crotch or breaking a sweat. It was actually a relief to talk to a feline his own rank, jackass that he was. Bucky figured Brock had been around long enough that maybe he’d been deployed out of season himself. Despite all their earlier disagreements, he seemed to be on board with Bucky’s strategy to reinforce discipline while the Strike cats were on the island.

That’s what lead them to waking the entire SCF squad just before dawn and driving them to the small training ground set up in the far back of the camp, where Hesco containers build up a makeshift perimeter. Brock and Bucky worked both teams until they turn into groaning, sweaty messes, tails and ears limp from exhaustion. Finally, none of them spare a second glance at Bucky as they force themselves to finish the very last exercise by noon.

Bucky orders F-1 Dernier to run an extra twenty laps. F-2 Morita, who jumped into the mess hall fight the previous day, gets five. Brock has three of his own cats running laps as well, but just tells them they’ll know when it’s okay to stop with a narrow look and leaves it at that. Bucky breathes a sigh of relief as the cats hustle to it, then watches the rest of their team trundle off towards the showers with a longing gaze. He can feel the sweat that built up under his uniform during the drills, even though all he did was pace back and forth and shout.

“Chow time?” Brock checks in, following his gaze and apparently not interested in fighting the cranky soldiers for the four pathetic showers either. It’s a harmless enough invitation so Bucky joins him, walking side by side to the collection of low structures where the cats spend most of their time.

“Thank you for being on board with this,” Bucky says to the older sergeant, as they crunch up the gravel path that leads to the cat’s mess. This time nothing would come between him and his chow. That ‘beef snack’ from the previous day had tasted like leather and sawdust dipped in barbeque sauce. Brock hasn’t said much all morning, but didn’t seem to have a problem cracking the whip with his cats so Bucky figures he could give him an inch. “This has never happened to me before.”

Brock’s grin is vulgar. “I can tell,” he says, instead of _you’re welcome._ “It happens to the best of us. I had half my team come up to stud at the same time once,” he adds, managing the rare feat of bragging and complaining at the same time. “It was just me and a team of she-cats for a while.”

“How terrible for you,” Bucky snorts. Brock laughs, but it’s mean and petty, and not at all like the fun laugh he had gotten out of Captain Rogers the day before.

“Would have been a whole lot better, ‘cept for the damn fraternizing regs. The ladies were all queens,” he glumly confides. _Queen_ was just a nice way of calling female cats _breeding stock,_ which the humans kept strong and active to produce thoroughbreds. That meant they were off limits to tomcats like Brock, or the rest of the SCFs. “My F-4, Jack? He was there too. Pretty frustrating, surrounded by all that tail, I’ll tell ya. Might be why some of ‘em been distracted by your, eh, situation.”

“Damn,” Bucky breathes out. He looks back towards the bath house where the twenty-two cats would be taking turns (hopefully not fighting) for that limited water. “Do you think the message got through?”

“I think they know the drill,” Brock says, waving off Bucky’s concern. Camp contractors set up the mess hall’s buffet along the utility structure’s back wall. Inside the long metal troughs were various forms of “food,” some more identifiable than others. Brock hands a cold metal tray to Bucky, lets him have first pickings of the congealed, fatty meals. “I actually wanted to talk to you about Captain Ward’s snipers,” he casually starts, once Bucky loads something red and runny onto one of the compartments of his metal tray with a plastic ladle. “Captain Rogers asked him to change their position, and add a backup instead of a fourth shooter. Why?”

“Hm,” Bucky gives the next tray a sniff. The sign said “broccoli cheddar soup” but Bucky’s nose doubted the neon yellow gruel had ever seen an actual vegetable. He takes a healthy scoop just to be polite. He doesn't want his starving, exhausted team eating this garbage, and figures he’d leave the good stuff for them. “First off, the snipers were positioned far too close. With the extra range our feline spotters have, each one had alternate positions about two clicks further back. They’d still have perfect sightlines, but no chance of being picked off by RNS’s heavy ordnance.”

Brock serves his own choice of gruel, loading up as much of the red meat sauce as possible, before grabbing one of the rock hard bread rolls Bucky always avoids and joining him at one of the tables. “If they’re placed that far out they will be cut off from the rest of the team,” Brock explains. Bucky puts two and two together. Strike’s sniper positions were likely _Brock's_ suggestion. “Reconnaissance of their nest will be twice as hard, recovery will be four times as hard and if anything went south they’d be completely cut off.”

“Those are all acceptable risks,” Bucky argues, his ears making a little half circle, a shrug. “Having the active snipers able to give cover fire to our teams on the ground will be more important to the overall safety of the entire operation. Our human commandos will be on the ground, in the dark, and unable to assist snipers even fifty feet away. The longer distance won't matter but the security of the sniper’s position will make us dominant on the battlefield.”

Brock curls a lip at the sound of the word “dominant,” but doesn't answer right away. His ears rotate thoughtfully front to back, and he frowns as he considers the two options.

“Besides,” Bucky continues, between mouthfuls of his own lunch. “The enemy has their own cats that will spot our snipers in the closer position, and the truck that arrived yesterday was loaded with mortars.”

“And you just know that for a fact, huh?” Brock shoots back, skeptical but not too bitter. It was just his way of asking the question.

“They always bring in mortars right before they prepare for troop movement, to give their forces covering fire when they leave the base. They expect us to attack with aircraft. They don't expect us to be after the HVT.”

He takes a few bites from the mush on his tray, and the two continue to eat in silence. Brock has a good ten years on Bucky, but Bucky knows the snow, and knows this island but most of all, Bucky knows the Soviets. It doesn’t make much difference to him if the ones holding the docks were RNS or local militia or just a bunch of angry, armed blue collar workers. The way they view Americans is always the same, just a difference in how willing they were to actually use the weapons they shuffled around the island from one dead drop to the next.

“Further back it is,” Brock concedes out of nowhere. He smiles but it's like his laugh, mean and showing too many teeth. Bucky pauses with his spork halfway to his mouth, but quickly pushes aside his urge to question Brock’s surrender.

It doesn't matter. In just a few days the op would be over, Russia’s eastern supply lines would be secured, most of the humans would be gone, and things would go back to normal. In the meantime Bucky can keep his promise to Captain Rogers, handle Brock, the Strike cats, and Bucky’s own squad.

Bucky clears his plate and gets up to leave when the first cats, fresh from the showers, start to jostle for position at his table. He feels Brock watching him, doing nothing to stop their behavior as they shove and growl at each other.

Just a few more days, Bucky tells himself again. Things will work out just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come join me on [Tumblr](https://resinonao3.tumblr.com/) to chat about Stucky!


	3. Equal Rank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Check out the bottom of the fic for some awesome new fanart!_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Trigger warning in this chapter for a rough sexual encounter, where depending on your view of anthropomorphic mating cycles/heat could be considered dubious consent. 
> 
> Handy Dandy Glossary: 
> 
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

Things go to shit pretty much immediately after lunch.

It starts off along the north perimeter, where Brock and Bucky had ordered the cats to fill Hescos. The waterproof canvas was a pain in the tail to set up inside a collapsible wire mesh frame, but once several of them interlock they form an instant, semi-permanent blast wall that protects the camp’s perimeter. Did the US Army outpost near Neftegorsk need more Hescos? Absolutely not. Did Brock and Bucky order their SCFs to fill them regardless, just to make them sweat? Absolutely yes.

Just as the last containers of crushed rocks and dirt is shoved into place, Captain Ward and Captain Rogers came strolling up. “F-Unit, atten- _hut!”_ Brock barks out, and every single cat leaps into line within seconds, standing at attention. They don’t salute, as is custom while deployed, but they proudly push their chests forward with ears erect and their tails swept down their right legs. Bucky is grateful for the beautiful display of discipline, proud of the two teams working so seamlessly together in front of both captains.

“At ease,” Steve says. Bucky and Brock both shift stances to parade rest, along with the cats lined up behind him. He and Ward both are wearing heavy issue BDUs, prepared for the oncoming snow. Their heads are trundled up in black balaclavas, and their white and gray camouflage looks crisp, new, and warm. Even their matching M4’s are white. The cats are wearing standard issue tactical greens. They don’t feel the cold like humans do, but damn it would be nice to have something that helped blend in. Bucky wonders if he could ask Captain Rogers to issue a supply order for them after the op wraps. “Just checking up on the team. You’ve both been working them pretty hard today.”

Brock answers right away, stepping directly in front of Bucky to make sure he wouldn’t respond first. “They needed to be exercised a bit before the big day, captain. Keeps the animals in line,” he says with one of his toothy grins. Bucky can practically feel the wave of resentment rippling out from his team and even Captain Rogers seems surprised by the casual insult. Referring to humanoids as animals wasn't quite a slur, but it isn't something you call one to their face.

“See, Rogers?” Ward says, with a dismissive roll of his eyes. “I told you Brock had it under control.”

Bucky isn’t surprised that Brock doesn’t bother mentioning that the exercise was Bucky’s idea, but it still annoys him.

“I see,” Captain Rogers says, and meets Bucky’s gaze for just long enough to suggest he suspects as much. Rogers really was a champ. “All that aside, I want to discuss running joint training drills with the SCFs for our team. The advanced squads we have going out along with their human counterparts, the snipers with their spotters, and both of you on HVT extraction. Do you think your team will be ready in an hour?”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky responds sharply, making sure to speak first this time. Fucking Brock has the audacity to scowl at him for it.

The captain nods once, too polished to acknowledge Brock’s behavior. “Parade ground at thirteen thirty.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky repeats.

“As you were,” Captain Rogers says. Captain Ward had already turned on his heel and left, without a second glance at Brock. There was no protocol for human OCs to show decorum to felines but Rogers always had with Bucky, out of habit maybe from working with his own human commandos. It makes Bucky even more frustrated with Strike that their captain is so disinterested in Brock's efforts to keep their cats in line, and he winds up distracted by this thought enough to not quite sense the escalating conflict behind him.

The whole conversation takes less than a minute, but somehow the tension from the last few days mounted up, rank and file, across the drawn faces of the other cats. Despite how wiped out they had been a moment ago from the morning drill, they all manage to look alert and tense when Bucky turns back around to face them. Twenty two tails sway nervously from side to side, forty-four ears all point up and forward directly at him. “Parade grounds at thirteen thirty,” Bucky calls out to the group. His cats sag slightly in relief and shift their weight, happy to be spared from filling any more damn Hescos, while the Strike cats look to Brock first before daring to relax. “Dismi—”

“Hold on a sec,” Brock cuts in, and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. If Bucky was smart he would have considered his heat before reacting, but he knocks Brock’s hand away and sneers.

“Don’t interrupt my goddamned orders, sergeant,” he snaps, and ignores how Brock’s ears flatten against the back of his head. “And don’t you dare refer to my team like that again. That’s not how I do things, and that’s not how I speak to the humans.”

Brock bares his teeth in anger while his tail lashes back and forth behind him and he crowds bodily into Bucky’s personal space. Their foreheads nearly touch, and Bucky’s whole chest lights on fire when he scents Brock’s powerful, masculine odor. He could haul Brock to the ground and mount him if—

Bucky shakes his head quickly to dislodge the repulsive image. “Shit,” he says, and takes a step back. He needs some air, needs to cool off before things escalate any further. Brock doesn’t give an inch and follows Bucky with a forward step of his own, leading with his chest. His eyes are dark round pools of aggression, either of desire or violence, without anything in between. Bucky’s hackles rise all along his tail and he lays back his ears, teeth bared. Despite the panic building in the back of his mind, telling him to retreat, Bucky plants his feet, forcing his own chest into Brock’s. “Back _off,_ Sergeant.”

“No,” Brock sneers, shoving his face down into Bucky’s.

That’s all it takes.

Cats move like water, languid, deliberate, and entirely silent—but when the dam bursts they become a flash flood, reaction times so quick that as soon as Brock goes down in a heap of snarling limbs, three cats have already skidded to a stop in front of Bucky, protectively arched in front of him with their fangs out.

F-1 Dernier is the first to punch Brock, but three more immediately follow. Brock is a big cat and doesn’t go down without a fight. Before Bucky can decide if he has to leap into the fray to save Brock from being beaten to death, a few kicks, punches, and one solid shoulder throw sends one hurtling into the rest of the regiment. That’s when all hell breaks loose.

One aggressive Strike cat tackles a smaller Howlie that had taken up a protective stance in front of Bucky. The smaller cat is so much faster than him he pulls his arm around in a joint lock. Bucky hears a shoulder pop before another Strike male—F-4 Jack he’s pretty sure—crashes into one of Howlies who leapt into the circle around him.

The chaos and his own fury fans Bucky’s heat into a raging inferno, and suddenly he wants to tackle the two cats struggling with Rumlow and rut on the other sergeant like a beast. His breath comes up short and he barely has time to pull the small cat from Jack before he wound up with a broken arm. Another Strike cat—Bucky can’t even tell who at this point, accidentally clips him in the shoulder while violently knocking another cat aside. The contact shoots through him like a lightning bolt.

Bucky swallows, loosens the small muscles in the back of his throat, and unleashes the loudest part of his voice. “Enough!” Bucky roars, using the rare sound cats almost never used. It echoes off the Hescos, cracks across the base like a roll of thunder, and the word repeats off the rock of the island several times before fading into the immediate silence that follows.

The cats all freeze. Four of them take several deliberate steps back from Brock, in particular, who is practically foaming in fury. He heaves as he catches his breath, eyes wide with shock at Bucky’s display. Then he shakes his head, like he’s the one who's disappointed.

“Deal with this,” is all Bucky says to him, motioning his hand out wide to encompass all the stunned and embarrassed soldiers. “I’m going to take a shower before we have to be at the parade grounds and perform for our humans.”

Before Brock could answer Bucky spins on his heel. His erection feels like a knife in his groin, and he needs to extract himself before any of the cats scent his painful need. Maybe a brawl would do them all some good.

Even if he hadn’t ruined everything by being pushed out of season, the closeness of their quarters would have naturally lead to tension eventually. The humans should have known better than to bring on a whole extra unit of cats so early on in the op prep, should definitely have known better than to house them all in one room. Bucky expected more out of his own cats, but Captain Rogers was right about trying to herd two unfamiliar teams into working together. They are all near a breaking point, and sometimes a fight is more necessary than sex.

 _Ugh,_ Bucky thinks, irritated with himself. _Sex._

Once he safely reaches the bath house, he quickly sheds his uniform, letting it fall to the floor in the locker room as he strides right into the shower and slaps the cold water handle onto full blast. He scrubs his neck and collar, under his arms and around his groin until the flesh is raw, and digs his fingers deep into the fur of his scruff as he works his shampoo through his long dark hair and around his ears. He pulls his tail through his fist several times, working out the oils and any loose dander. His beautiful white coat had long since gone coarse and frazzled from all the repeated shampooing, but the temporary relief was worth the sacrifice. Even if it meant he woke up in the morning with sheets full of his own  fine, white fur.

Once he rinses all the soap and sweat and pheromones down the shower drain to hell where it belongs, he looks down at his dick. It’s huge with need, glistening from moisture, skin stretched too tight from the unnatural swell, and nearly purple at the tip. He gingerly wraps one hand around the shaft and hisses at the sting, releasing it immediately. The water was cold, and in Russia that meant _ice_ cold, but he still boils from the inside out and his own touch is fire against the over stimulated flesh.

“Fuck,” he whispers. His dick hurt too much to even touch. “Fuck,” he says again, louder this time as desperation starts to settle in. If he can’t even jerk off what hope does he have of keeping all the cats together long enough to complete the op? He thinks about his basic operational role, to exfiltrate the HVT from the warehouse on the far northern dock. Intel put Sakhalin’s RNS leader in that building, and he’s supposed to operate as advanced scout for Captain Rogers himself. He’s run missions with the captain in the past, but this is going to be their most dangerous one yet and as it stands he can’t even imagine penetrating the security of the warehouse without tripping over his own dick.

 _Ugh,_ Bucky thinks. _Penetrating._

Bucky drops his forehead to the shower wall with a thunk against the scummy cement, furious with himself. “...fuck.”

“I hear ya,” Brock says, and Bucky spins around to find himself in the company of the other cat. Brock is naked save for his own collar, and casually flips up the lever to turn on the shower next to Bucky’s. Bucky eyes him suspiciously, annoyed that the he had been so caught up in his own drama that Brock was able to get so close to him without him noticing. Brock appears relaxed, his tiger striped tail trails loose behind him, and his ears lay back when the water hits his face. The only thing that gives him away his how rock hard he is, and how he does nothing to hide it.

“I got the cats sorted out,” he casually says, slicking back his thick black hair. Of all the cats Bucky has ever worked with, Brock was the only one he’d ever met that wore it short, like a human soldier. It was uncomfortable to look at, showing the ugly sides of his head where cats lacked human ears. It also clearly displayed his scruff, the thatch of fur at the back of his neck that disappeared into his natural hairline. Bucky wants to bite it, and tears his eyes away so he can focus on what Brock’s actually saying.

“I gave F-1 Dernier latrine duty before he comes to the parade ground. I hope that’s alright?”

Bucky frowns at Brock’s bullshit deference, and focuses instead on the chill of water crashing over his shoulder. The air starts to fog from the heat of Brock’s water, but it doesn’t matter. Bucky can hide in the icy spray as long as he needs to. He doesn’t really trust himself to have a conversation so close to the other cat, while they are both tired, wet, and very, _very_ aroused.

“I have a proposition for you,” Brock finally admits, and Bucky groans.

“Not you too,” he says, and pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t have the energy for this. “I’m not fucking you, Brock.”

“You know, you’re a real piece of shit,” Brock laughs, going over his broad chest with a soapy sponge. Bucky rolls his eyes, and puts his head back under so that the spray hits him hard on the top of the head. He hopes the water would drone out whatever Brock has to say next but has no such luck. “And I mean that personally, I really can’t stand you. But you’re a good soldier, and know your business and I respect what you’ve done with your team. The way you talk to Captain Rogers,” Brock trails off for a moment and Bucky pulls his head back out from under the spray when he detects some uncharacteristic wistfulness coming from the other sergeant, a crack in his arrogant veneer.

Bucky knew his relationship with the captain wasn’t typical, that there was a shred of something there almost like respect, but didn’t think Brock had cared. Captain Ward treats Brock much the same way as any cat would expect—relative indifference bordering on annoyed at having to deal with them at all. At least he doesn’t seem cruel, which would have not only been acceptable but even encouraged, with how the entire regiment had been performing lately.

Bucky gives him a skeptical squint, trying to read any dishonesty in Brock’s tone. Unfortunately, Brock notices Bucky’s erection when he turns and Bucky sees the other cat’s adam’s apple bob in a hard swallow. Brock shakes his head, pushes his face into the water of his own shower and scrubs with the flats of his hands. He has to bend over to fit under the low shower heads as well, and Bucky can relate to his frustrated grumble. The tag on Brock’s collar chimes lightly in the splash.

His attention finally pulled from Bucky’s body, Brock finds the words to continue. “You were there today, Bucky. You saw what this does to all our cats. Sooner or later the humans will notice but how many of our people will get in trouble before they figure out it’s you? It seems like the responsible thing to do is to actually report it before it gets out of hand—”

“You wouldn’t fucking _dare,”_ Bucky snaps. “You’re a piece of fucking work, you know that? You almost had me convinced that this whole greater good speech but then you threaten to out me? I’d report _myself_ to Captain Rogers before I’d let you fucking touch me, you son of a—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Brock steps back, his tail loosely rolling out behind him as his ears defensively curl away. “I didn’t mean to— look, I’m sorry alright? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s kind of hard to focus around you,” he drops his gaze to Bucky’s dick, setting off pins and needles that dance up Bucky’s spine. Brock is big and attractive, well muscled and strong enough to hold himself up against the wall while Bucky fucks the heat right out of himself. The principle of the thing keeps Bucky in place, but it’s a struggle. Brock takes Bucky’s silence as permission to continue. “Okay, well, I just wanted to let you know that even though I hate your guts—”

“Sweet talker.”

“Even though I _hate your guts,”_ Brock repeats, sneering over being interrupted and made fun of at the same time. “I think it would solve both our problems. You were out there today, you saw what happened. Your guys seem to be okay with all this but my cats are a bunch of animals.”

Bucky looks up sharply at that, but doesn’t pick the same fight over again. He knows Brock is right. Bucky’s hands slide down his belly, hover around his over stimulated erection and he groans, helpless and annoyed. Brock tries to go back to his own washing but is clearly too distracted by now to pay any real attention to if he’s used soap or not and just stands under the water, running his fingers through his hair. Bucky locks his arms across his chest, and pushes his ears slightly back. His own hands weren’t a fucking invitation and Brock could do better keeping his eyes forward.

Brock coughs before he continues. “So, how do you think they’ll do on the parade ground? In the _field?_ If it’s me and you then there’s just a risk of fraternizing, and the lower ranks stay out of it. It’ll clear their heads and the humans will never know. C’mon, Bucky,” he urges, his voice going a little sharp around the edges with neediness, but he still has his shit together to know he was making sense. “From one sergeant to another, what’s our alternative? Won’t it be a relief to—”

“Yes, alright, I get it,” Bucky interrupts, putting a stop to Brock’s frankly annoying number of rational arguments. The other cat looks at him in surprise, and smiles with nearly all of his teeth.

Bucky wants to take it back already, punch Brock in the mouth, and hide in his bunk for about a week until his heat passes. Instead he throws his head back and growls at the ceiling, because has no where else to direct his anger. There’s no hiding from it, Operation Lemurian Star is only two days away. “Just don’t say a fucking word of this to anyone. You sure Captain Ward doesn’t know? The humans won’t notice?”

“They don’t fucking notice anything,” Brock snorts, and Bucky has to hand him that one.

“Fine,” Bucky agrees, and as soon as he unhooks his arms from across his chest and relaxes his tail, Brock pounces. Bucky immediately realizes his mistake when Brock forces him against the shower wall. He usually takes for granted that he’s the largest cat around, but now he’s at a tactical disadvantage. Brock isn’t exactly out of his weight class, but he’s older, more seasoned, with a body mapped with scars and experience. Bucky gets off a single elbow before Brock has his teeth in his scruff. Bucky gasps, his collar suddenly too tight around his throat. His body goes weak beneath him and he feels Brock’s cock nudge between his thighs. “Ugh, fuck you,” he growls.

Brock laughs into his neck, his breath coming hot against the flesh under Bucky’s collar, and he slides one hand down between them to push forcefully on the root of Bucky’s tail.

Fuck it, Bucky thinks. He’s desperate enough just to be mated, getting this over with will be worth it. The length of sopping wet white fluff rolls to the side and Bucky whimpers as pushes his hips back into the other cat’s groin, submitting. Brock holds Bucky’s forehead with one hand, keeping the back of Bucky’s scruff tucked firmly against his mouth, while the other moves down from the top of his tail to guide his cock into Bucky’s body. He pushes inside with a few quick thrusts, and Bucky gasps at the relief it immediately triggers. The fire across his skin is snuffed out, replaced with a numb, tingling sensation that steals his breath away. Brock is crushing him against the wall, but it hardly matters when his cock bottoms out.

Bucky groans as Brock moves in him, then jerks away when the bold motherfucker takes ahold of his tail. Bucky wants to shout at him, to turn around and sock him in the jaw, but when Brock gives his tail a firm, relentless tug, a cry bursts out of his chest. His vertebrae go loose and separate, then the dull pain is quickly overcome by the sudden shock of stimulation throughout his body. It’s not quite pleasure but it’s on the right side of pain, and Bucky is swept away by the heat radiating out of Brock’s beautiful body into his own.

Brock releases Bucky’s scruff from between his teeth and licks him instead, down the back of his neck, several times under his collar, and up the side of his face to the hard folded line of his ear. “Come on, kitten,” Brock huffs out possessively, and licks again until all Bucky can do is whimper and comply. “Come for me. Show me how much you fucking needed my cock inside you.”

Bucky hates himself when he comes on the spot, shooting hot white semen onto the shower wall and shuddering from the sudden burst of relief. It’s not pleasurable, it’s not fun, and Brock thrusts into him so hard he has to struggle to breathe through the steam and the heat and the press of Brock’s hard body against his own.

Brock finally sucks in a sharp breath and shakes through his own orgasm. Bucky can feel the other cat’s cock pulsing inside him, the spread of heat from semen and the sharp sting of his barbs holding fast inside him. Brock finally releases a gust of breath on Bucky’s neck and sags into him, then lets Bucky’s tail whip free from his grip.

Bucky shoves off from the wall and Brock puts his strong arms around him. He smells so fucking good Bucky’s tongue lolls out of his mouth as he pants. “Easy, kitten,” Brock says, between sharp heaving breaths while keeping Bucky’s body against him. He brings one arm up from Bucky’s chest, latches onto his collar, like a handle, and holds him firmly in place. “You don’t want to hurt yourself. Just a few more minutes.”

“I fucking hate you,” Bucky wheezes out, and braces himself against the wall to keep his balance as the feeling starts to return to his legs. They stand like this for a few moments longer, locked together as they catch their breath and shake from the effort of holding themselves upright. Bucky already regrets agreeing to this, and thinks he should have just come clean to Captain Rogers days ago when the heat first started. Shivering in the hot/cold water of the showers, with a sticky panting mass of angry muscle at his back, gives Bucky all the time he needs to realize that the whole thing was a huge mistake.

There’s a release inside his body as Brock finally begins to soften, his barbs retracting from their hold. Brock’s cock slips free and Bucky’s tail swishes hard enough to snap the water from the wet matted fur. Bucky feels the pressure on his throat subside when his collar is finally relinquished from Brock’s iron grip. He coughs and rubs his throat, where the rough material pinched his skin.

“Feeling’s mutual, kid,” Brock says, grinning as he staggers backwards. Of course he’s got a fucking smile, since he just dominated Bucky like a devious piece of shit. It aches all the way up Bucky’s back, and the pain from his tail being pulled fills his belly with nausea. His heat may be temporarily sated but now he also has a headache, and the deep self loathing of giving that son of a bitch a reason to gloat. “What’d I tell ya? Nice to get some relief around here, eh?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky retaliates, rubbing the base of his tail with one hand. He shuts off his shower with a hard strike against the lever, and collects his soap from the shower rack. He needs to hold Brock’s scent to deter the other cats, so trying to wash the filth out from between his legs would have made what he just went through completely pointless. None of the other cats on base would have questioned submitting to Bucky, but how could he be so fucking stupid to think Brock would? None of the other cats on base would have _dared_ to pull his tail, either.

“If you pull my fucking tail again I’ll kill you,” he growls, and means it.

Ten minutes ago that would have started a fight, but now Brock just laughs. Their power dynamic is utterly destroyed, and Bucky knows it. “Sure thing kitten,” Brock says, and returns to his steamy shower, still smiling and deeply satisfied.

* * *

 

Artwork for this fic from the amazing [Dean Draws](http://deandraws.tumblr.com/post/154564689155/commission-work-for-the-lovely-resinao3)!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention before, but the title of this fic, and the name of the fic series is based off of the song [Something Wild Calls You Home](https://youtu.be/ytMqO-WQpQ4), by Lindsey Stirling.


	4. Chain of Command

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _More fanart of snow leopard Bucky at the end of the chapter!_
> 
> Handy dandy glossary:   
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

Steve heard the roar of “ _ Enough! _ ” from across the base. He looks up sharply from the map displayed on the digital table in front of him, and shares a concerned frown with Captain Ward. “What was that?”

Ward lets out a long suffering sigh. “You never heard a cat roar before?” He glances back down at the map, apparently no longer concerned now that he had a chance to be condescending about it. “You probably stressed them out with all that talk of training and discipline. You know how skittish they can be.”

Ward points his stylus to the largest facility on the Okta dockyards, enlarging the 3D view of it and turning it around to examine the entrances. It is the likely base of operations for the insurgents since the Russian Motherland Forces, or  _ Russkiye Narodniye Sili _ as they call themselves, had captured it a month prior. Steve had been reviewing the HVT’s jacket—some scientist named Zola—with Ward that morning, since they just received the secured data packet and it was their job to pull him out of that very building. He had tried not to be too nervous about securing a high value target while the cats seemed to have so much trouble lately, but he had faith the extra training he planned with the SCFs would make the difference.

“I’m going to check it out,” Steve says, stepping away from the table. “You know the drills for the parade ground already, right?”

“Sure do, Cap,” Ward says, sounding bored, and Steve worries he might not have even been listening. Well, Steve has faith in his  _ own  _ SCFs, at least. 

He and Ward are the same rank, but Ward is freshly promoted and apparently hasn’t shaken the habit of calling him by his rank. It’s one of those  _ accidentally-on-purpose _ ways that Ward pushes boundaries with Steve, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s his way of being friendly or is just flat out obnoxious. Something about Ward makes it seem petty and mean, regardless of his easy smiles and charming disposition.

Steve steps out of the ops center and looks across the yard, up the hill towards the north end of the forward operating post, where he had left the cats just minutes before. He sees Bucky marching down the path alone, and steps onto the main road to catch up to him. Before he can snag the cat’s attention, Bucky turns right, towards the cat’s bath house. He should just let it go, Steve figures. He had already dragged Bucky away from his private shower the day before, and he thinks Bucky would come to him if there was any real cause for concern.

Steve shivers, the cold finally getting to him through his heavy Gore-Tex coat and he stuffs his hands into the stiff, lined pockets. Sakhalin is a strategic location in the Soviet theater, especially now that power is being handed over to the Russian provisional government after seventy five years of oversight from both the Japanese and the United States. Not only was their hilltop base uniquely situated to receive all communications of the region, oversee the shipping lanes, and act as a bridge between their Japanese allies, but it was the year round home to over one hundred GI’s who were regularly tasked with wresting key resources away from the insurgents. It was dangerous, mission critical work to maintain stability in the region.

Their Japanese Navy allies called them bullet catchers. It wasn’t too far off.

This is the third time he’s been deployed to Sakhalin, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never get used to the frigid climate that whips off the North Pacific and straight down the collar of whatever he’s wearing, reminding him that no matter how many layers he puts on it’s never quite enough to stay warm. Even though nine months out of the year it suffers punishing weather and even more punishing relations with the locals, when the pre-dawn sun bled molten sunlight all the way down from the tops of the trees to the wide open ocean, the view became utterly breathtaking. It made the icy chill somewhat more manageable, even in January.

As Steve turns to head back, he catches sight of Brock, walking in front of two straight lines of cats. Strike’s F-5 sends three off on some errand before ordering the rest to continue down the path, where they would eventually arrive at the parade grounds, a full half hour ahead of schedule. Steve figures it’s a fair tactic. The two F-5s were trying to impress discipline on their teams after the last couple of chaotic days, and making them wait around in the cold would likely do the trick. Maybe a bit harsh, Steve thinks, but he figures as long as the two F-5s were finally getting along it wasn’t his place to get involved.

Steve blows into his clasped palms again, trying to hold onto that small bit of heat as he considers them, then stops in his tracks when he catches Brock, peeling off the main path and head to the cat’s bath house. Something in the feline’s stride strikes a nerve. It’s not quite an alarm, but just enough unease for Steve to suddenly consider the strange way Bucky had been behaving since the Strike expeditionary force arrived at the outpost.

Steve could put two and two together and noticed his feline unit’s performance had taken a nose dive ever since Strike’s cats came on base. He hadn’t ever known Bucky to have social problems, but Strike’s F-5 was particularly aggressive (not to mention fucking  _ huge _ for a feline. _ ) _

Bucky was the first Soldier Companion Feline Steve had been assigned, and despite all the training that told him to handle cats from a distance, he wound up relying on his SCF, and trusting him like any other soldier under his command. It’s a subtle relationship—Bucky is still a feline afterall—but one that helps make Sakhalin home along with the molten sunrises, the sound of the sea, and the scent of herring before the season’s first snow storm.

Steve frowns when he considers the hard set to Brock’s shoulders, the thrust of his stride, and the stiffness of his tail as he makes his way towards the bath house. It was one thing if they had butted heads over the SCF operations, but if the two of them had been outright fighting that would explain why the other cats had been responding so poorly to one another.

Despite how much Steve looks beyond the ears sprouting from the top of Bucky’s head, or the long spotted tail that trails around behind him, he really can’t let himself think of Bucky as just another one of his commandos. It’s easy to forget, when he looks so otherwise human. Aside from their visible feline physiology, cats don’t follow the same rules as humans do when it came to conflict—especially ungelded ones, like the military uses. They just naturally respond to hostility with physical aggression, and he had seen some of the savage fights they could get into first hand. Predatory instincts and combat training don’t mix well when dozens of cats are left to their own devices. He just never expected Bucky would be the type of cat to get caught up in all that…  _ wildness. _

Steve trots across the open path, then follows the small gravel offshoot towards the bath house. Maybe he could catch them before they went into the showers, and take an opportunity to speak to them both about what might be happening within their ranks. He also wants to know who had made the unholy racket of a roar across the base. He suspects it was Bucky, but never heard his own SCF’s voice thrown like that before, or  _ any  _ cat for that matter. It only makes Steve more convinced that something really is wrong between the two F-5s. Regardless of the situation, Brock is clearly the one bringing out the worst in his SCF, and the whole regiment could be deteriorating because of some feline pissing match.

It takes a few minutes to catch up, but he figures he could call them out if they were already cooling off in the showers. If they were fighting, he’d know his instincts were correct and he’d be able to properly get them to separate and work out the issue. 

Sure enough, Steve hears arguing as soon as he enters the building. It’s quiet and low, like the threat of thunder, obviously more than just a simple disagreement. He doesn't intend to sneak as he makes his way across the cement floor, but he still shortens his stride past the locker rooms and around the corner to the showers. It’s as if his body knows the space isn’t meant for him, with the low doorways and flickering, exposed lightbulbs hanging at shoulder height.

“Your guys seem to be okay with all this.” Brock’s unmistakable voice carries past the locker rooms and through the switchbacks that lead to the showers. “But my cats are a bunch of animals. So, how do you think they’ll do on the parade ground? In the  _ field? _ If it’s me and you then there’s just a risk of fraternizing, and the lower ranks stay out of it. It’ll clear their heads and the humans will never know. C’mon, Bucky. From one sergeant to another, what’s our alternative?”

Steve tells himself he doesn’t understand what Brock is asking for, but he’s not a complete idiot. He takes a look around the corner and discovers the two cats at the end of the showers. They are naked and soapy under the steaming spray, and both carry obscenely bright pink erections. They're also completely oblivious to his presence. The sound of the water probably keeps them from hearing him, and the steam masks his scent. The way they face each other, their tails twitching and shoulders set firmly in place, makes Steve think they probably wouldn’t be able to tear their eyes off one another if he had shouted. 

Technically it's against regulations to fraternize, but Steve was never the sort of officer that cracked down on that sort of thing. As long as it doesn't cause trouble, sex is just something soldiers do to relieve stress, pass the time, or blow off steam. Nine-month deployments were a long time to be away from US soil, and generally it’s better for soldiers to find relief with one another than become entangled with the complicated Russian locals surrounding them. 

The cats, on the other hand, are an entirely separate matter. There are different regs for the feline units, and much more severe penalties for infractions, especially when it came to sex. It has something to do with how the government controls their breeding. The Center for Feline Control cycles felines out of the field when they are in a mating season, which is the excuse for coming down hard on the ones who slip up in the showers from time to time. Steve is pretty sure they are physically beaten in some cases, because supposedly felines don’t react the same way to confinement or some such bullshit. 

Steve bites his lip, worried what might happen to Bucky if he’s caught by a CO other than himself. Steve doesn’t think Ward would really care if Brock was caught fraternizing, even with a cat from another unit, but something about the man makes Steve suspect he’d happily throw Bucky under the bus if it meant he could pat himself on his back. None of the other human personnel would hesitate to report it and then Steve would be forced to put it on record.

“Yes, alright, I get it,” came Bucky’s irritated reply, and Steve groans inwardly. “Just don’t say a fucking word of this to anyone. You sure Captain Ward doesn’t know? The humans won’t notice?”

“They don’t fucking notice anything,” Brock says. Steve frowns at that, and turns to go, now absolutely sure this is something he shouldn’t be watching. 

“Fine,” is Bucky’s final answer, and Steve stops when he hears the two crash into one another.

Bucky hisses and elbows the other cat, but Brock shoves him face first into the tiles under the showerhead. Steve’s first impulse is to leap to Bucky’s defense, thinking he must have been wrong, that this must be a fight rather than sex. Then Brock buries his mouth into the back of Bucky’s neck and Bucky moans sharply before pushing his hips into Brock’s in response. “Ugh, fuck you,” Bucky grumbles, and Brock just laughs through his teeth before jerking his hips forward.

If these were his human commandos, Steve would put an end to it without question. Bucky is clearly resisting and is savagely resentful of the other feline, but between all his cursing and insults are long, deep moans of unmistakable pleasure. Steve remembers his training from OCS, thinking back to the lectures on how to handle members from attached feline units. It’s well known that cats are usually aggressive when mating, with each other and with anyone who tries to interrupt them, and that could just be what he stumbled on.

Bucky utters a gasp thickened with so much need that Steve is embarrassingly reminded of how long it’s been since he’s enjoyed someone else’s company. Suddenly, Steve worries that he isn’t just watching them as a concerned superior officer, trying to ensure there was no abuse taking place, and the word  _ pervert _ floats to the top of his mind. Bucky interrupts that thought with a growl and Steve looks back up, because he can’t seem to help himself, even as his cheeks burn in shame.

Bucky threw his shoulder back to push at Brock, but Brock just bit his neck harder and Bucky goes boneless again. Bucky’s head rolls away from Brock to expose the side of his neck, and Brock pushes his face into it, licks it over and over again, before returning to the back of his scruff and clamping down with his sharp teeth. All the while Steve can hear the gentle chiming of their collars, each time Brock pushes past it with his mouth or Bucky jerks against Brock’s hold. 

Steve’s never seen anything like this before.

Bucky utters a wide, open mouthed moan, swears again, and Brock jerks his hips even harder. His free hand slips down between them and he loops a fist around Bucky's twitching tail. He pulls— _ hard _ —and Bucky gives a ragged shout. 

Steve finally had enough and turns to leave. It’s not his business, and he wasted enough time on the threshold between invading a private moment along with trespassing in the cat’s locker room. There’s no regulation keeping humans from the cat facilities, but he can’t help feel like he’s the one to blame for coming across the scene in the showers, walking under the uncomfortably low ceiling into a space where he clearly didn’t belong.

If they want to fuck each other he wasn’t going to interrupt, even if it makes him feel sick to his stomach that such a sweet, loyal cat like Bucky went for such a bastard like Brock. It’s frustrating, and baffling, and even more confusing to him than his own obnoxiously present erection.

* * *

 

 

**Fanart**

Did you know it's common for real snow leopards to nom their tails? I have seen the reasons behind this range from it being a casual habit, to protecting their noses from the cold, to it being a nervous tick in captivity.

Snow Leopard Bucky by [ColdCigarettes](http://coldcigarettes.tumblr.com/post/153535590041/the-lovely-limoncello-bella-commissioned-me-for), commissioned for me by [Limoncello_Bella](http://limoncello-bella.tumblr.com/)! 


	5. Mated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _More (NSFW) fanart of snow leopard Bucky at the end of the chapter!_
> 
>  
> 
> Handy dandy glossary:  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

The drills on the parade grounds go flawlessly, and Steve hates it.

Brock and Bucky arrive together at thirteen twenty, and the change that comes over the cats is nearly immediate. The entire regiment had been standing to attention on the parade ground the entire time, nearly an unflinching rank and file of twenty-two silent felines. Human soldiers wouldn’t have been able to sustain it for so long, wearing nothing but standard issue BDU’s in this kind of cold, but that’s why the cats are such valuable assets to military operations.

All forty-four ears swivel to the sound of their sergeant’s arrival, and Steve can see their eyes go wide when Brock easily begins to issue orders. Their collective surprise doesn’t last long; they respond to Brock almost immediately, efficiently, and afterwards Steve thinks he has never seen them perform more smoothly.

Bucky had remained silent at Brock’s side, even after Steve approached and told him directly which drills he expected the cats to perform. Every time he addressed Bucky, Brock answered for him. Every time he expected Bucky to offer a suggestion, Brock was the one who spoke up. It’s like some spell had been broken, the tension between the two sergeants evaporating just like that, taking all of Bucky’s natural authority with it.

Steve hates it, but can’t deny the entire regiment’s performance is suddenly impeccable, when just hours ago they struggled not to tear each other to pieces.

They wrap up at fifteen hundred and dismiss the teams for the rest of the afternoon. They’d be back for the night drills at eighteen hundred, but Steve doesn’t have any set drills involving the felines until then. It’s too bad, since it’d be nice to have a chance to go over those damn sniper positions with Bucky again—without his pushy, older shadow butting in. He thinks about this as the regiment turns and marches away, with perfect posture and erect ears, and supposes he was the one forcing himself into their world when he really has no business making Bucky’s private life his own problem.

Brock turns to leave first and Steve frowns when Bucky predictably falls into step at his heel.

“Bucky, wait up,” he says, while not making Bucky’s private life his own problem. Both F-5s stop and turn back to him and he flicks his eyes back to Brock. “You’re dismissed, F-5 Brock.”

Brock hesitates, his body naturally drawing back to Bucky’s like a magnet, but before Steve has to repeat himself Brock complies. “Yes, sir,” he says, and stalks off.

“Is something wrong, captain?” Bucky asks, his expression more neutral than usual, clearly forced.

“You tell me,” Steve challenges. He sees the flicker of surprise cross Bucky’s features, something so subtle that Steve instantly feels guilty. Bucky glances back out at his troops, dispersing across the base, and gives Steve a helpless little shake of his head, still unsure what Steve could mean.

“I don’t know, sir.” He’s looking for a reason that he or his team would be in trouble, even though he knows the drills went smoothly.

“You and Brock?” Steve says, throwing him a bone. Bucky’s tail stops moving, a sudden halt to the near constant motion of the swaying appendage, and Steve could swear he heard the cat catch his breath. “You backed down several times when I asked for your input. You let him answer for you—for _your_ team—over and over again. Did you know that he already told Ward we’re moving forward with the tight sniper perimeter on the op? He said you and he agreed, after you told me your spotters would be better placed farther out. Is that true? Did you change the strategy without telling me first?”

Bucky swallows thickly, and shifts his weight. Steve has never seen him so nervous—or nervous at all for that matter. “Brock has a good, tactical reason for the close proximity of the snipers,” he starts, but it’s a weak explanation and Steve doesn’t buy it for a minute. Bucky is technically a Hunter classification SCF, and a trained sniper spotter. He had once saved Steve’s life on the mainland by signaling the friendly snipers that there was an IED triggerman waiting for them in a dilapidated storefront window, just using his body language alone.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to say so, but Steve would freely admit his cat has better tactical sense than most of the human officers he has served with. Certainly better than Captain Grant fucking Ward. Steve doesn’t believe for a second that Brock knows how to position snipers better than Bucky, regardless of his age.

“Is he hurting you?”

Steve wasn't planning on saying that, but at least it gets a real response. Bucky looks up, the slits of his eyes narrowing into a single black line, and his ears lay back for a moment before he forces them erect. Bucky’s tail gives one hard whip to the side. He’s agitated, but at least some of the old fire has returned to his eyes. “No.”

“Lying to a superior officer counts as conduct unbecoming, soldier.”

“I’m not a _liar,_ captain,” he says through clenched teeth. He takes a breath right after, like he wants to say more, but instead looks away and stays locked down like a safe.

“Well?” Steve pushes, trying to crack him.

“I needed to settle things with Brock, so I _settled_ them,” Bucky explains, keeping his voice measured and deliberate. “We may have had different ideas on how to approach some logistics but we couldn’t keep nipping at each other about how to command the regiment. He’s older, more experienced, and one hundred percent dedicated to the success of the op. It just makes more sense for him to take point on some strategic decisions. Less confusing for the two teams to have one leader.”

“So you just step back from your responsibilities?”

“No, it’s not—”

“You just act like that rank on your collar means nothing?” Steve gives a meaningful look to Bucky’s throat and Bucky grabs the tag, taking in a sharp breath of fear like Steve just threatened to tear it off him and throw it in the latrine.

“No, sir, never.”

“I know I told you human teams have issues sometimes when it comes to joint operations, but I didn’t mean you should just roll over for a cat who's clearly less experienced in this theater than yourself. A human squad would find a way—”

“With all due respect, sir,” Bucky says with a curl in his upper lip that shows his fangs. “We are _not_ a human squad.”

The response stuns him, both from the aggression and the defiance, but he’s shaken to the core when he realizes Bucky is right. How much of Steve’s frustration is projected onto Bucky from a strictly human point of view? Wasn’t he just thinking of the time Bucky had saved his life? And that had been on his very first deployment with his SCF. Since then they’d gone through a lot together, enough for Steve to know Bucky is a competent leader, a competent soldier, and would not let Brock make decisions for him that would endanger the life of his team. Maybe Bucky really is just making things work for the best, dispersing the tension with his reduced leadership role. It was a sacrifice he was making, in a way, to put aside his pride and let Brock take the lead. Steve didn’t think he’d personally ever be able to do it, and that thoughts makes him feel like a piece of shit for not seeing it sooner.

Steve lets out an angry sigh, and Bucky visibly stiffens, bracing himself for the reprimand he expects after such an outburst.

He expects Steve to _strike_ him, Steve realizes with a jolt. Like Steve had been trained to do with SCFs, with the flat of his hand across the face. “Minor Field Disciplinary Action” they call it. Steve nods curtly, trying to telegraph that no such thing would happen by crossing his arms against his chest, his hands safely tucked away. Bucky watches him do this, but doesn’t relax even after the message sinks in.

“You know you can trust me right? If things aren’t okay.” Steve struggles with what he wants to say, tries to get the words past the miles of rank, tradition, and species divide between them. He wants to ask him if Brock is abusing him. He wants to ask him if Brock had forced him in the showers. He wants to ask him if Brock is making threats, blackmailing Bucky to capitulate. “Just, tell me if you need help,” he demands instead, losing his nerve to ask any of those questions. Something in Bucky’s eyes narrow at the sudden change in his tone, like he wasn’t sure what Steve might be implying he’d need help with. “With _anything._ Okay?”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak, closes it when he changes his mind and shakes his head. He breaks eye contact, and puts his fangs into his bottom lip before speaking. It's a tick Steve realizes he’s seen before but never quite put together how much it shows a self conscious side of Bucky’s personality. “I may have heard that Captain Ward is going to pitch a revised strategy to include airstrikes from the Japanese tonight. You might want to prepare a counter-strategy to convince Colonel Danvers to take them off the table.”

Steve’s eyebrows nearly jump off his face in surprise. “Who told you that? Brock?”

Bucky doesn’t answer, challenging him with his silence, and Steve wavers for only a second before nodding. “Thank you for telling me,” he says, keeping the newfound trust between them intact. If he tore that wall down now, Bucky would likely never speak to him frankly again. “Dismissed.”

“Thank you, captain,” Bucky says.

Steve feels the cold again after Bucky steps away. The wind had picked up while they were talking, the high altitude of the outpost exposing the US occupying force to all the brutal gales from the North Pacific. Standing alone at the main concourse, right next to the wide open parade ground, makes Steve feel particularly small. Steve and Captain Ward are the highest ranking officers at the outpost, except for Colonel Danvers, who only just arrived to oversee the operation.

In some ways, he feels proud to be responsible for the hundred men and women that occupy this base, and all twenty-four cats under his and Ward’s care. In other ways, he feels cut loose, like he’s out here entirely on his own. Hearing that Ward is planning to go behind his back about the airstrike strategy makes him wish that Bucky had just stayed and they could have shot the shit over bad mess hall food and compared notes about their regiment's top performers. Maybe even complain a little about Strike’s bitchy tactics, from one leader to another. An F-5 was pretty far down the rank tree, but out there at the remote outpost no one would judge if they became companions. Only if Bucky had been human, of course.

As he brutally reminded him, Bucky was not human. Bucky was funny and charming and sarcastic and a fantastic soldier, but he wasn’t human, and that’s what mattered. He wasn’t someone Steve could be—

“Shit,” Steve quietly says to himself and shivers. He tucks his hands into his armpits, and trots back to the officer barracks, trying to stop himself from finishing that thought.

“Hey pal,” Captain Ward greets when Steve makes it through the main entry and shakes out of his jacket. He’s sitting in a chair, pushing his weight back so it stands on its hind legs as he casually cuts slivers of a bright red apple off its core with a combat knife. “Training went pretty well today didn’t it? Looks like your cat finally got out of his own way.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, not bothering to pick a fight with someone he had absolutely no respect for. “Are we good on the strategy for the op so far? Did you want to go over anything else before we meet the Colonel tonight?”

Ward gives him a thoughtless look, shrugs and sets the chair back down on all fours. “No, why?” He keeps his tone on the right side of suspicious, sounding more confused by the question than resentful.

“Just want to make sure everything goes smoothly,” Steve answers flatly. He crosses the room and sits at the table set up at the end of the room, opposite Ward’s desk. The officer’s barracks consists of one small common area, an attached bath with two shower stalls, a separate latrine, and a sleeping room with two twin-sized bunk beds pushed into opposite corners.

Captain Ward snorts. Grant’s an objectively attractive man, with a full head of dark hair, large brown eyes and a mouth that looks like it was kissed by the angels. His twisted grin and the rude noise makes Steve want to punch it. “You’re the Star Spangled Man with a plan, last I checked. I’m just going along for the ride,” he adds, deceptively deferential. “Strike’ll be ready for whatever you decide, Cap.”

“Roger that,” Steve says, matching Ward’s fake smile with his own. He doesn’t bother bandying with Ward about his stupid nickname. It drives him absolutely nuts, but everyone has a stupid nickname in the Army, and at least it reminds him that not all problems can be solved with punching. Instead, he settles into the metal folding chair in front of the plain wooden table that makes up his work space. It’s sparse but tidy, and he pops open the protective blast shell of his field laptop to check in with his emails.

Steve double checks the operation’s control settings on his computer, calling up all the secured orders for air strikes, and finds one registered to Captain Grant Ward on hold pending the Colonel’s authorization with the Japanese. The JDS Kongō will arrive at the projected support perimeter, in Russian waters by 0300 the morning of Operation Lemurian Star, and was supposed to only perform as support in case things go south. Far, _far_ south. If the battleship actively engages, the battery against the Sakhalin infrastructure would be catastrophic, the locals completely alienated from the occupying US forces. That would lead to the entire base put in danger from insurgent reprisal. Not to mention the risk their forces would face on the ground if the aircraft carrier were to launch their heavy artillery on the docks.

The risk was overwhelming, the plan overwhelmingly _stupid._ Their simple op of extracting Arnim Zola with minimal possible casualties didn’t call for shock and awe ballistics. Despite all that, it was a strategy Ward was apparently considering, behind Steve’s back, pretending like he was entirely on board with Steve’s initial proposed plan. It’s just like Brock and the goddamn sniper positions, which he finally made an executive decision on to place further back, as Bucky had originally advised.

Steve can hear Ward behind him, teeth snapping into the crisp apple, pushing his weight back into the creaking chair. Outside the officer’s barracks is a competent, capable leader, someone Steve could see himself actually relating to, someone he already respects, who would never be given command of a single human soldier. Yet here Steve is, expected to work with this two faced son of a gun. Even if Bucky went through feline officer’s training, he’d never shake the “F” in front of his rank. He and Bucky could never be true peers.

Could never even be _friends._

* * *

 

**Fanart**

Snow leopard Bucky, given to me as a gift by the amazingly wonderful and talented [fowlyinks](http://fowlyinks.tumblr.com/)! (LOOK AT THAT GLORIOUS TAIL.) 


	6. Morale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Fanart of cat Bucky at the end of the chapter!_
> 
> Handy dandy glossary:  
> PT: Physical Training   
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

Bucky is last into the barracks, as usual. He stops in the small room just inside the front door, where a desk and chair are set up for him and Brock to share in case they need to register briefing details on the single, old computer plugged into the only wall socket. Since his heat started Bucky had taken to sleeping behind the desk, directly on the cement floor and out of sight of the door in case the human guards shine their flashlights in the front room in the middle of the night. He had woken up each and every morning, cold and sore, like he'd been beaten in his sleep, but at least he slept at all. It would have been impossible in the room with all the others, let alone miserable for them. 

He’s already opening up his BDU jacket, looking forward to shutting his tired eyes, when he comes around his desk to bury himself into the blanket and pillow that he keeps stashed there, only to find someone had moved them.

Bucky hisses through his teeth, furious that one of them has gone so far. All their linens are marked by name and serial number, and it won’t be any trouble to find out who was wrapping their faces in his heat scented blanket if he checks the barracks. The real issue is that clearly mating with Brock still hasn’t made an impact on their fucking behavior, and tomorrow was the very last day for them to get their shit together before the op.

“Fucking animals,” Bucky bitterly growls, and can feel a ridge of fur stand up in fury along the top of his tail.  _ “Fuck.” _

Bucky cracks open the door into the main room, and peers across the still forms of the cats inside. The first thing he notices is that the mattress on his bunk is gone, and it remains unoccupied. The next thing he notices is Brock, sitting cross legged on the bunk above his, tail raised inquisitively behind him. Brock catches his eye, and holds up a bundle of Army issued bedding—Bucky’s own pillow and blanket from the front room.

Bucky considers sleeping on the floor under his jacket. He’s done it before, on the first night of his heat, and woke up with blue lips and chattering teeth. It was colder tonight, the fat clouds that had been drifting overhead all week finally releasing their fluffy white snow earlier that evening. Cats are temperate to the icy cold, but not when they’re sleeping, and even with the tip of his tail tucked all the way up around his face Bucky had been miserable the last few nights. 

Bucky meets Brock’s expectant gaze, and the older cat beckons him over again with a toss of his head. Brock is still an asshole for just assuming, but at least sleeping in Brock’s bed would help scent his heat away. It’s crucial that the next day is executed as flawlessly as the training had earlier that afternoon, and they couldn’t afford anymore disciplinary slip ups that the humans might notice now that he is deliberately breaking the regs by fraternizing. He had gotten close enough when he’d snapped at Captain Rogers earlier, in a moment of complete and utter madness. 

Bucky bares his fangs, not at Brock but at himself, and his tail twitches irritably behind him before he leans forward and creeps across the floor on all fours. A few cats mumble and roll away from him, or look up with sleepy curiosity as he passes, but otherwise don’t seem to pay him any attention. Bucky’s feels a sudden fondness for them, even the Strike cats, and hates that he called them animals earlier, even if none of them heard.

He crouches low just in front of the bunk, then springs into the top bed without a sound. Brock welcomes him by sliding away from the edge and folds open his own blankets. Bucky squirms out of his uniform, and drops the bundle of clothes to the empty frame of the lower bunk. 

Bucky tucks his own pillow under his cheek and folds into the heat of Brock’s chest. The other cat pulls his blankets around them both before he licks the back of Bucky’s ear in greeting. Bucky exhales, and actively tries to forget who Brock is while he enjoys the warmth and musky, masculine scent of Brock’s body. Brock licks just under Bucky’s hairline, where his scruff trails down a line of white spotted fur to his shoulders, and gives him a few shallow, seeking bites. Bucky shrugs, telling him that he’s not interested in sex, and Brock bites harder, insisting. Bucky is exhausted and just wants to get to sleep, but somehow when he wasn’t paying attention his dick managed to find the strength to get hard. Brock doesn’t have to do much before Bucky aches for it as well.

Brock wraps his arms tighter around Bucky’s chest, pulls him in close enough for Bucky to feel the hard line of his erection against his backside. Before Bucky can really decide if he wants to extract himself or not, Brock slips a hand to Bucky’s lower back and pushes into the hard bundle of nerves at the root of Bucky’s tail. 

“Oh,” Bucky gasps, feels his tail compulsively roll to the side and his hips grind back into Brock’s body. Submitting to Brock somehow feels easier this time, but grosser, since he doesn’t even have the satisfaction of elbowing Brock in the face first. Brock pushes Bucky’s shorts down and Bucky bites his own arm to stop himself from moaning when Brock slips inside. Their bodies come together more smoothly than their first, frantic mating in the shower. Brock’s cock is thick and heavy inside Bucky’s body and he rolls his hips at a steady pace, touching Bucky in places he hasn’t been for too goddamn long. 

Sex outside of the restrictive CFC matchmaking dorm is so much  _ better, _ even if it means he’s having sex with a jackass like Brock. No dismissive queens, no humans that just don't understand, and no fucking sample collection. Yet another reminder of how privileged he is to have been drafted into the Army, instead of left to rot with his private keeper. He’s grateful, he’ll always be grateful, but that thought goes sideways and brings his family to mind, so Bucky bites his own arm again to bring himself back to the present. The heat pooling in his belly is a welcome distraction, the rough sex starting to feel something close to pleasure.

Brock keeps his own teeth clenched firmly into Bucky’s scruff, and holds Bucky against him with one hand pressed flatly into Bucky’s belly with the other wrapped across his chest. It takes only a few more thrusts before Rumlow comes. The sudden snag of pain from Rumlow’s barbs push Bucky over the edge and he shudders in a weak release of his own.

They catch their breath in near silence. It isn’t so bad, being mated to Brock. He hadn’t touched Bucky’s tail, and the stress of the last few hours melt away in the afterglow of his fresh orgasm. Brock’s a manipulative coward, and dominated him when he had clearly expressed interest only in a submissive partner, but Bucky can’t help but feel gratitude that there’s at least a single cat on base that’s the same rank as him. He still hates Brock’s guts, but he’s glad he’s there, holding him now, letting him sleep in his bed. 

Bucky drifts off, thinking that he probably should have just mated with Brock sooner and spared all the cats from the drama of dealing with his heat. 

He comes sharply awake when he feels a nip on his ear. “The  _ fuck,  _ Brock,” he whispers harshly, reaching up to stroke his stinging ear.

“Quit it,” Brock says, keeping his voice low. 

“Quit what?” 

“That noise. You’re purring.”

“Fuck off,” Bucky sighs, resettling his weight, and curls tighter into his pillow. He feels the rumble of Brock’s frustrated growl through his back. 

“Gonna kick you out if you do it again,” Brock threatens.  

“No you won’t,” Bucky grumbles. 

Brock doesn’t. Bucky quickly feels his consciousness dragged back under by exhaustion, brought on by too many cold nights sleeping on the floor.

When Bucky wakes again he finds that Brock has nudged his shorts back over his hips, and one rough, calloused hand grips his waist possessively. The older cat wound up falling asleep with his face tucked into the back of Bucky’s neck, unconsciously drawn into Bucky’s irresistible scent. Brock chuffs softly in his sleep, puffing short little bursts of wind into Bucky’s scruff like the giant fucking hypocrite he is.

Bucky cracks a single eye and yawns when he sees it’s still dark. They wouldn’t have to be up for another hour, just enough time for him to sneak off to the showers before the rest of the cats are woken by the first morning bell. Except no—Bucky feels a burst of sensation in his groin when he remembers he doesn’t need to keep up with his daily half dozen showers now that he’s mated. He yawns again, and smiles at the comfortable security of it all.

And, oh! How convenient. He’s hard as a rock and has a belly full of desire. He rolls back, licks Brock right across the eyes and grins when Brock winces and makes a disgusted growl at being woken. Bucky pushes his hips into Brock’s lap and wriggles, and feels victorious when Brock’s sex makes a valiant twitch against his backside in response. Brock grumbles something incomprehensible and doesn’t open his eyes, but manages to drag his hand down to push the top of Bucky’s tail. The length of white fur coils from between them, out of the way. It takes only a few moments of Brock’s barely awake rutting for Bucky’s belly to clench. He comes weakly, mostly into Brock’s sheets (entirely on purpose) and lets out a long, relieved sigh.

Brock relaxes immediately after his own orgasm, and pushes away just enough so that he can replant his face back into his own pillow without catching his hooks inside Bucky. After they retract Bucky finally extracts himself from Brock’s embrace. He tosses his own blanket and pillow back down on his old abandoned bed, drops soundlessly away from the upper bunk without disturbing the cat sleeping on the floor closest to the metal frame. He rolls himself into his blanket and dozes for the next thirty minutes, blissfully ignored.

* * *

“Sergeant Bucky,” F-4 Dum Dum says, trotting up to him after the morning PT. Bucky was just heading to the ops station after Brock dismissed the rest of the regiment, already distracted by the laundry list of small logistical details that need to be worked out before they leave for the operation. It looms in front of them all like a spectre, and just about everyone on base—human and humanoid feline alike—is a little preoccupied, and a more than a little tense.

“Dum Dum,” Bucky greets, instinctively glancing over the other cat’s shoulder to see where Brock might have gone. His mate was talking to a group of his own F-4s, the leaders of the squad attached to the sniper teams. “You have five minutes before I have to report to Captain Rogers.” 

“I just wanted to ask about my team’s positions. We were taken off spotter detail, and now we’re covering the tactical team on the lower west side of the storage facility.”

“Sergeant Brock confirmed that this morning,” Bucky says. “Does your team have any issue taking over the ground engagement?” 

Dum Dum puffs into his mustache. He’s a big cat, not nearly as tall as Bucky but probably just as heavy, with a wide face and massive teeth. It’s not common for cats to wear facial hair, but it suits the older cat whose ginger striped tabby markings blend almost too well with his cartoonishly ginger hair. “Well, no,” he says, and his ear flicks to the side. “I just wanted to confirm with you. My team kicks just as much ass on the ground as we do in the nest, but I’m worried his guys won’t know that area well enough to cover us on approach.”

“That’s what the extra reconnaissance run was for this morning,” Bucky says. “Did you notice any of them struggling with the drills?” 

“Not exactly, but you know how those Strike cats are,” Dum Dum snorts. He’s just about as loud as he is orange, and Dum Dum doesn’t even bother to moderate his voice when a couple of Strike cats pass by behind them. They look up and he glares back at them, challenging them to say something about it.

“No,” Bucky says, swishing his tail out wide, bringing Dum Dum’s attention back around. “I don’t know how ‘Strike cats’ are. Do you have a specific complaint or are you just questioning orders?” 

Dum Dum lowers his ears, embarrassed for once, and his long orange and blonde striped tail tucks around his leg. “Sorry, Sarge.” 

“Just remember, there’s no Strike cats or Howlies. There’s just the feline regiment of the United States Army. We're not a bunch of spoiled house cats squabbling over table scraps. Maybe remind Morita and Jonesy and Monty, while you’re at it.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Dum Dum complies. Bucky figures the issue is settled, so he turns away, but Dum Dum takes in a quick breath. “It’s just, I wonder if you would have said the same thing a week ago.”

It’s a fair question, even if Dum Dum didn’t quite come right out and ask it. Bucky waits two beats before he smiles in earnest. “I would have kicked Brock’s ass a week ago, if he had reassigned personnel without telling me.” Dum Dum laughs, and relaxes his tail, just as Bucky had hoped. He wishes he could leave it that, could let the frank comment linger until Dum Dum was sure he had his old sergeant back, but he knows now’s not the time for platitudes. “What I said is just as true now as it would have been a week ago and will be in the future. We are  _ one  _ team, Dum Dum. I can’t question every single one of Captain Ward’s orders, and you can’t question every single one of Sergeant Brock’s, or this all falls apart. There is nothing between me and Brock that would make me endanger the op, the cats in our regiment, or our humans. If I thought there was a real reason to be concerned, I wouldn’t let the orders stand.”

Dum Dum’s jaw is tight, and his gaze lowered, but he understands. Bucky feels a sympathetic tug at Dum Dum’s frustration. They had served together a long time, and now Bucky is essentially telling him that he has to follow Brock’s orders like they were his own. “One thing I also won’t let stand is how damn bad morale has been lately,” he says, getting a sudden idea. “We have two hours in between prep operations. I have to get going now, but the meeting should only last about twenty minutes. Do you want to go knock the ball around?” 

Dum Dum’s ears come up and he grins. “Yes! Damn, it’s been months.”

“Invite the Strike cats. We can call it a team building exercise and hopefully the humans will leave us alone,” Bucky says and tosses a wink at him over his shoulder as he already heads off, back down the path towards the command station. 

“I’ll get the bats!” 

* * *

 

**Fanart**

Cat Bucky sketch, a gift by the unbelievably awesome [Sulasaferoom](http://sulasaferoom.tumblr.com/)! 


	7. Baseball

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Fanart of cat Bucky at the end of the chapter!_
> 
> Handy dandy glossary:  
> BDU: Battle Dress Uniform (standard issue military filed uniforms)  
> PT: Physical Training  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

The meeting at the command station takes a full half hour, but Captain Rogers is so organized they were able to cover the entire operation, start to finish. Captain Ward doesn’t say much, except to confirm his role when they discuss how they will extract the HVT. Brock is there, and follows Ward’s lead, leaving Bucky to ask only a few key questions about the roles of the feline teams. The controversial sniper squads are finally locked in, two clicks back from the original position but assigned to Strike cats. Bucky knows it’s a compromise, but he’s confident the position is more important than the roster. Brock’s team may be slightly less disciplined, slightly more aggressive, but he has to live by the same philosophy he just shoved down Dum Dum’s throat and makes peace with it.

“Any other questions?” Captain Rogers says, after the half hour is up, on the dot.

“No, sir,” Bucky and Brock respond in unison, and Rogers glances back to Ward, whose face changes so subtly that a human would likely not pick up on it. Bucky checks Steve’s reaction and he just goes back to closing out all the windows on his field laptop, which make the tabletop display in front of them go dark.

“Great, dismissed until oh two thirty, when we convene to move out.”

“Yes, sir,” Brock says, and Bucky turns to follow him out of the station. It’s a small building in the center of the base, with no windows and an extra ring of Hescos around it for protection. It’s essentially a bunker, where the command operations are executed by the Colonel and her advisors from the display on the tabletop feed. There are some holographic interface tools as well, but the cats aren’t trained to use them and Captain Rogers wound up using analogue maps to walk through the operations for their benefit.

“Showers?” Brock casually suggests, obviously not interested in whether or not Bucky has to bathe.

“Oh,” Bucky says, and shrinks a little. “Actually, I had Dum Dum wrangle the cats up for baseball. Thought they could all use a bit of a morale boost before tonight. You could come too,” Bucky quickly adds, brightening when Brock pauses. “I bet they’d love to see—”

“Hey Bucky, wait up!” Rogers calls from the doorway of the command station.

Brock grins. “Master’s callin’,” he whispers through his teeth, just to be a jerk, and turns to leave.

Bucky bristles, disgusted by how casually Brock uses human idioms, and wishes he never invited his mate to the baseball game. He turns around to meet with Rogers as he walks down the path from the command station, and sees the human shiver from the cold. Snow has started to build up in drifts around the buildings, and four of his cats are given shovel duty nearly around the clock to keep the rough hewn pathways clear of the stuff. Yet Rogers isn’t wearing the thick outer coat the humans normally do when they’re outside, and it makes Bucky agitated to see him blow heat into his clasped hands and tuck them under his arms.

“Captain Rogers,” he says, when he’s face to face with the idiot.

“Where are you headed? I’ll walk with you.”

Bucky isn’t prepared for that answer. He stalls for a minute, looking back up to the command station where he hopes Ward or one of the human lieutenants would bring Rogers his jacket. They’re probably all clueless. “Oh, um, to the parade ground. We’re executing a quick team building exercise before we ship out tonight. Going to blow off a little steam.”

“Oh? You’re not gonna have your cats fill Hescos again are you?”

Rogers is joking, Bucky’s pretty sure, but he answers anyway. “Baseball.”

Captain Rogers gives such a sharp gasp that Bucky startles a step away from him. “You play baseball! I don’t believe— How did I not know that? What team do you follow? I like the Cubs but I know they don’t have a chance at the World Series this year, not with Mickey Free throwing like a twelfth grader,” Steve snorts at his last statement, like he can’t believe the human with the ridiculous name could have possibly let him down, and Bucky is so lost he doesn’t know where to interrupt him. Rogers is smiling so wide he doesn’t even want to. It's a bright candid kind of smile like he doesn’t realize he’s talking to a cat. “Do you follow the NorCal league? Have you been to a game? If you’re ever in New York on leave you should look me up, I’ll take you to one. I’ve seen cats in the bleachers before. Oh, and of course there's the batcats!”

“Um,” Bucky says. “I haven’t actually watched much human sports,” he gently explains, trying to let him down easy. “And I don’t get leave.”

Rogers’ mouth clicks shut. “Oh, of course. I didn’t mean—er, it doesn’t matter. Who taught you how to play?”

“My dad,” Bucky stupidly answers, swept along by the captain’s manic energy. It was on impulse, without thinking, and he could have kicked himself for the slip up. He puts his fangs into his bottom lip, trying not to bare his teeth in case Rogers thought his frustration was targeted at him.

Luckily Rogers doesn’t fixate on his family. “You weren’t born into the service?”

Bucky swallows. “I was drafted when I was seven. Is there something you needed?”

“Right, I—” Rogers looks a little lost, like he had been derailed so far back in the conversation he is confused as how he wound up here. He shivers again, harder this time, and his bright red cheeks start to darken from the cold. “I wanted to thank you,” he finally says. “For warning me about Ward. I found the airstrike orders altered when I checked. I was able to convince Colonel Danvers to keep the JDS Kongō on emergency standby instead.”

Bucky winks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, captain.”

Steve laughs, “Well, it’s all baseball to me.”

“Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Steve laughs again, and the darkness is pushed out of his face. “Ah, I needed that. Look, I don’t have anywhere I need to be until we leave and I don’t want to hang out with Captain Ward for the next couple of hours. Do you think I could watch you play?”

“Um, of course, sir,” he says, instead of _Oh, fuck._

Humans are blissfully dense when it comes to picking up on body language, so Rogers doesn't notice the nervous twitch to his tail and sighs in relief as they step back onto the trail. Bucky takes a deep breath, and falls into step at his elbow.

“So you’ve never seen a professional game?” Rogers says conversationally.

“No. Where do you watch them, sir?”

“On TV. In the rec room.”

“Are— are cats allowed in the rec room, sir?” Bucky asks carefully, trying to not sound like he’s asking for permission. If he had been allowed in the rec room on base the entire time he’d been stationed in Russia, he might want to strangle someone.

“Oh,” Rogers says, his voice breaks a little as he gets the hint. “Sorry I don’t actually know... I don’t think so. But you can see them online.” He’s still trying to be helpful, but Bucky is starting to feel embarrassed and just wishes he’d change the subject. The internet in the barracks is spotty at best, and they were warned that the computer was only for official business when it was installed three years ago. Only cats of a rank F-3 or higher are even allowed to touch it. “I guess if you don’t regularly follow the teams it’s not so interesting anyway,” he finally says, shifting the conversation away from things cats can and can’t access. “Where are you stationed when you’re Stateside?”

“Fort Drum, sir,” he answers. He can already hear the noise from the parade grounds, shouting and chatting, a sharp crack of a bat and a leather ball singing through the air. Generally sounds of cats having fun. It’s a relief, and he has to stop himself from quickening his pace.

“You’re not too far from Hamilton,” Rogers blurts out. “We’re practically neighbors.”

“Practically, sir,” he agrees, when what he thinks is, _not even close._ Drum is much farther north than Hamilton, only thirty miles south of the border with Canada and nowhere near a major city. The cats from the Howling Commandos are stationed there two months out of the year.

“That settles it,” Rogers chirps, and rubs his own arms through his too-thin BDUs. His breath is coming out in puffy white clouds in front of his face, but he doesn’t seem to really mind. “When you’re next on US Soil, I’ll take you to a Cubs game.”

“I look forward to it, sir.” Captain Rogers is so excited that Bucky doesn’t have the heart to tell him it will never happen. Fort Drum has an open campus policy, meaning the cats can come and go as they please, as long as they return by curfew. Bucky already knows he’d never make it. If it was possible to get all the way to Brooklyn and back within the eight hour window, the last time he saw his family wouldn’t have been over ten years ago, for his father’s funeral. He’s allowed to send them a postcard once a week, but he can’t receive mail so he has no idea if they are still at the same address. Or even alive, really.

That thought kills Bucky’s already tentative mood, and he quickly scents the air, wondering if Brock is at the baseball game or not. He could use a quick, distracting poke. He picks up his mate’s scent on a clear snap of wind that comes from the parade ground, and quickens his pace.

“Geez, it’s cold. Do you just not feel it, or…” Rogers trails off and Bucky has to pull his attention away from the cats as he approaches the parade ground. He was probably going to ask if cats are issued heavy coats, but realized that would be ridiculous. Then again, cats aren’t issued firearms. In the fucking _Army._

Bucky spots Brock and he feels the familiar tingle between his legs, the tug behind his belly button that draws him towards his mate like he’s hooked on a fishing line. He has to remind himself that Rogers has essentially asked him a question, and before he can turn off his desire for his mate, he flashes half his teeth at Rogers and his pupils slide all the way open, drinking in the sight of the human beside him. “We run hotter than you,” he says, in a tone so salacious that Rogers stops in his tracks. Bucky also stops when he realizes what he’s done, and feels his cheeks heat. There’s a sudden sweep of energy between them when their eyes meet, violent and strange, like an entire river inside Bucky has been abruptly redirected, crashing over the rocks of his life. He coughs to break the intense stare. “It’s an internal body temperature thing,” he says quickly, trying to recover.

Rogers either hadn't felt the strange energy, or is trying to pretend it didn’t happen, because all he says is, “Ah,” and stops just behind him when they reach the parade ground.

The other cats saw Rogers coming from a mile away and the game ground to a halt so they could stand to attention. Dum Dum has such a look of betrayal on his face that Bucky has to break his gaze, hoping he’d forgive him for leading a human—a human _officer—_ into their midst. Brock’s ears turn in conflict, mapping the area around him with compulsive caution as he stands in front of the rest.

“Captain Rogers, sir,” Brock greets as his ears swivel to Bucky. He absolutely noticed the interaction between Bucky and Captain Rogers, and Bucky was sure he’d pay for it later. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“As you were, er, sergeant,” Rogers quickly says, holding up his hands. Bucky thinks that's the first time he hears a human use the honorific rank the cats use for F-5s, and even Brock looks taken aback by the deference. “As you were,” he repeats louder, over the rest of the cats. They all relax, but none go to pick up the discarded gloves and bats. “I don’t mean to crash your exercise,” he explains, relaxing enough so that his tone is a bit smoother. “It’s a good idea to loosen up before a big op like this, wish I had thought about it for my guys,” he explains. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

The others exchange a few quick glances, ears turning like a field of tiny radars before any of them dare to move. They wouldn't unless Rogers gave them a direct order, or if Brock or Bucky stepped in.

“We okay?” Bucky quietly checks in with Brock, who rolls his eyes. Brock doesn’t bother answering him directly, but turns his attention back to the field.

“Come on you sad sack of kittens, if you can’t play a game with the captain watching how do you expect to perform tomorrow?”

Bucky wants to groan at yet another slur from the other sergeant, but instead he breathes a sigh of relief when the cats pick up their equipment. Dum Dum is the one who gives Bucky the hardest look, but Morita pats his shoulder and the two head back to the outfield. Bucky would have to talk to him later, but he’d be alright. Dum Dum is a trooper.

Bucky’s thoughts are interrupted when Brock clutches the back of his neck, grabbing him right at the scruff, and gives him a slight shake. “You’re on my team,” he growls, right into his ear, and Bucky’s tail drops in submission.

“Of course,” he answers. He can feel Rogers staring into his back, but ignores him. He figures Brock has to make a show of dominance in front of the human, so it’s the least he could expect. It's makes it easier that Rogers already told them to ignore him, as Bucky tries to shake off the unwanted shame he feels by submitting to Brock right in front of his human CO.

Brock bellows out instructions for the other players, and the cats set up on the field. The teams are mixed, and Bucky doesn’t know all the names of the Strike cats, but it hardly matters for the way they play. The bases are made up of metal cafeteria trays, dug only slightly into the frozen packed dirt of the parade ground, and the home plate is marked out with duct tape. Brock steps up to the plate, because of course he’d be hitting first, and swings the old, cracked bat in the air a few times for practice.

Jonesy licks his front teeth, and his tail goes out behind him when he hurtles the ball towards the plate. Brock’s shoulders twist, there’s a crack of wood, and the ball goes soaring. Bucky takes off at a sprint on all fours, his ears laid flat back behind him as the wind dances past. It feels good to really move, and for a time he’s able to forget all about Brock, and the deeply confusing interaction he just had with Captain Rogers.

* * *

Steve’s hands ball into fists reflexively when he sees Brock grab the back of Bucky’s neck. He already wants to shout orders, and maybe even punch Brock in the mouth for how he treats his SCF. Instead he crosses his arms over his chest and watches the cats spread out across the parade ground, in what looks more or less like a baseball game.

The plates are too far apart, and he isn’t entirely sure what’s going on with their team roster or their batting order, but again, he’s just there to watch. If he starts poking his overlarge nose into things now the cats would never be able to relax. Bucky had said this was a team building exercise, but Steve recognizes a morale boost when he sees one.

Brock is the first one up to bat, and a cat Steve recognizes from his own unit is pitching. He throws using a full rotation of his upper body, his tail snapping around to give him added momentum and the ball shoots out of his hand like a bullet. Brock strikes it hard but high, so that it doesn’t gain distance but instead pops up over their heads.

That’s pretty much where some semblance to any baseball Steve’s ever seen breaks down. The cats on Brock’s team, including Bucky, all leap after the ball, while the cats on the pitcher’s team scramble to stop them. Steve has been around cats for years, almost his entire time as an officer in the Army, but he has rarely seen them move like this outside of direct combat. Their long, acrobatic tails and flexible spines lets them run on all fours like no human could, and they leap and spring across the dirt of the parade ground like _actual cats._

In the midst of what looks like complete chaos, Steve can spot the bright white flash of Bucky’s exquisite tail, fuller and longer than any of the others, dotted with black spots, like a leopard. Bucky shouts with laughter as he tumbles back down to earth after leaping at least six feet in the air to avoid Dum Dum’s dive, then dives into a roll of his own once he’s caught hold of the ball. He spins end over end several times before landing back on all fours with a wild grin. Now that he has the ball, Bucky straightens and sprints on just his two legs, spinning and juking from side to side to avoid the cats that try to tackle him, or swipe his legs out from under his upright form.

Steve doesn’t even feel the cold anymore, so taken in by the artistry of how the cats move, the power and precision of their grace. He watches Bucky most of all, watches him come completely untied from the careful, formal F-5 Steve is more accustomed to. Every time Bucky’s unit is partnered with Steve’s Howlies, whatever casual interaction between them is usually in between the lines of formal interaction. A wink here a nudge there, maybe some harmless banter. Steve has never seen the cats at play before, never even thought about it, but it’s a gift to see Bucky have so much fun. Whatever these cats think of “baseball” acts as a little bridge for Steve to peek into Bucky’s actual life, to see the man for who he really is.

Steve feels a tightness around his eyes when the thought occurs to him. The _cat_ he really is, he mentally corrects.

Bucky hurtles the ball down the field, into the waiting hands of a fellow Howlie, then goes down under a pile of cats. The ball is completely forgotten about on Bucky’s end of the field, as the pile writhes and struggles for seemingly nothing other than pinning one another. Steve is torn between looking for that dash of white fur, and actually paying attention to where the “game” continues on with the ball. Luckily his mind is made up for him when the cats on the sidelines cheer suddenly in excitement. Brock has the ball, and is sprinting back to home plate. Instead of diving home, he throws the ball to one of the Strike cats, and swerves into the pile that swallowed Bucky whole.

Brock crashes into the cluster of twisting limbs like a boulder landing in shallow water, other cats springing away from his mass as he tumbles into the fray. Brock is a huge cat, and his bright orange tiger markings are easy to spot across the field, but he quickly vanishes in a the pile of playful roughhousing. Bucky shoots out from the group, just freed by Brock’s sacrifice, and dives forward again on all fours. He covers the length of the field in what looks like two strides, his hands and feet barely touching the ground. The Strike cat that had sprinted away with the ball earlier apparently understands the game better than Steve because he cries out Bucky's name and hurtles the ball into his waiting catch, just before the Strike cat goes down into a cat pile of his own.

Bucky skids over home plate and tumbles to a stop, only an arm’s length away from Steve. He’s holding the ball in his mouth, his whole body steaming from sweat in the frigid air, cheeks puffing breath around the white leather.

Steve finally remembers to swallow, after their eyes meet.

Bucky’s team leaps up and cheers, and he spits the ball into his hand, winks at Steve and dives back into the game. Steve jumps up and screams in support. It’s not baseball, but it’s _amazing,_ and he’s going to root for Bucky’s team, his role as an impartial spectator be damned.

Once he commits to being a fan, Steve doesn’t seem to be able to stop hooting and screaming across the parade ground, so as the game goes on the fielding team takes that as permission to make more noise themselves to make up for the preferential treatment. One of the Strike cats on the other team actually makes a home run (or really a ‘goal’ Steve thinks, as he tries to work out how the rules of their game in his head.) Steve almost cries out in disappointment but is interrupted when Lieutenant MacKenzie next to him fist pumps the air and cheers. Steve had been so hyperfocused on the game that he didn’t realize the audience that built up of the human personnel. He spots First Lieutenant May, First Sergeant Johnson, and even Privates Fitz and Simmons he recognized from ops support, plus a collection of other men and women from both the Howlies and Strike.

None of them seem to agree which team to root for since the cats mixed their numbers amongst both units, but eventually they pick a favorite and go with it. One thing’s for certain, no one on the sidelines has any idea what the rules were, but all of them are having a great time, laughing and cheering and leaping with excitement when the cats pull off various feats of acrobatics to avoid a tackle or catch the ball.

It goes on like this for a full hour.

Eventually, the cats poop out. A few of them collapse on the spot, laying down on the field and giving up in exhausted piles. Even Bucky just lets his legs go out from under him and sits hard, and can’t be bothered to give chase when the ball soars right over his head. A few of them curl into tight balls and rest, falling into immediate catnaps.

Brock is panting and smiling, not even his usual mean smile but a real one, and he waves the surviving cats in from the “outfield”. The humans welcome the cats back with pats on their heads and claps on the back and immediately start asking questions about the rules, recapping their favorite moments like any fans greeting their home team.

Steve’s never seen so much engagement between the humans and their feline counterparts on base, and even he can’t help but talk to a few of the Howlies cats as he keeps an eye out for Bucky. He’s ashamed he doesn't even know all of their names but they don't seem offended. Instead, Morita and Jonesy—that was the pitcher—Dum Dum and Dernier are quick to introduce themselves, and for a few minutes Steve feels so welcome into their little circle all he can think about is finding Bucky and sharing that sense of overwhelming flattery with his very own SCF.

He cranes his neck to see over all the upright ears around him, and finally spots Brock trotting up to meet Bucky in the outfield. Brock gave him a helping hand up, which was a relief at first, until Steve saw Bucky lay his ears back. Bucky snatches his arm free but Brock grabs it again, forcefully turns Bucky where he stands and bites the back of Bucky’s neck so hard Steve can hear the high yelp of pain carry over the parade ground. Bucky jerks violently away from the other cat, but Brock grabs his collar to hold him still, then bites him until he drops to his knees.

No one else is paying attention, and Steve’s stomach fills with ice when he realizes no one would do anything even if they had seen it. Suddenly the bright smiles and cheerfully bobbing tails around him take on something more sinister, the regiment of cats painfully oblivious to the torment of their own leader. No, not oblivious, Steve thinks, when he can tell all their ears have swiveled at once at the sound of Bucky’s cry.

“Excuse me,” he says, and extracts himself from Monty's explanation of infield rules.

“But Captain if you just—”

“Don’t interrupt the captain, Monty,” Dum Dum cautions, taking ahold of the over eager cat’s shoulder. “Sorry, sir, we won’t keep you,” he adds. He doesn’t quite nod, but somehow Steve picks up on a meaningful look towards the northern end of the parade ground, where Brock and Bucky had just slipped off the field toward the perimeter where the cats had been filling Hescos earlier that week.

Steve doesn’t know why he thinks he has any business breaking away from the group of gleeful cats and soldiers to follow them; it’s not like he’d even consider reporting the F-5s. He just does it, carried along by the strange force of energy that struck him earlier, when Bucky had looked at him with those huge dark eyes and growled out that one, flirtatious remark that shattered every one of Steve’s ideas about what makes someone a man.

* * *

There’s a small shed on the northern end of the base, where the metal frames and bins for the Hescos are stored flat, in one huge stack. That’s where Steve catches up to Brock and Bucky. He ducks behind one of the standing Hescos when Bucky pulls up short and tears his arm out of Brock’s grip.

“Damn it, Brock,” Bucky says, and slaps Brock’s hand away when he tries to grab hold again. “Do you want to get fucking caught? Give it a rest!”

“You’re sweating it out all over the field,” Brock hisses. “Don’t think I didn’t fucking notice!”

“Is this about Rogers?” Bucky snaps, and Steve feels the ice block in his gut snap down the middle. This was his fault? “Look I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought him but I couldn’t exactly tell him no. What do you expect from—”

Bucky is cut off when Brock grabs him by the throat and shoves him back into the shed. “Don’t say that fucking human’s name again,” Brock growls as Bucky scrambles to hold himself up against the corrugated metal. “I saw you look at him, you little shit. Think he won’t notice that stink comin’ off you? Humans get cat scratch fever even if they don’t even fuckin’ know it, so don’t act like you brought him out there cuz you were just followin’ orders.” Brock slams Bucky’s head into the wall of the shed to drive his point home and then drops him.

But Brock miscalculated. Bucky’s teeth show in a flash of fury and he uses his impact on all fours to his advantage, springs up and tackles Brock in the middle. The older cat is just surprised enough to be thrown completely around, but counters quickly with a fierce snarl. One tumble together and Brock has Bucky pinned, his teeth sunk into his scruff.

“Submit, you brat!” Brock growls. Bucky is face down in the dirt, his ears flattened against the back of his head, and he turns his neck and snaps at Brock’s face. “We only have twelve more hours before we can be done with each other, I’m not going to let us fuck it up for the humans like a bunch of dumb beasts.”

“Then fuck me already,” Bucky spits out, and grins wide while he tries to catch his breath. “If you fucking can.”

Steve had aborted his mission to intervene behind another Hesco, closer this time, and sees Bucky present himself to the other cat. Suddenly he’s not too sure what he’s seeing. Is this just more aggressive mating that he has no business interrupting? Or is Brock actually stepping over a line? Bucky grunts and twists in Brock’s grip but doesn’t strike the other cat or flatten his ears. Steve is stuck, not knowing what to do.

“I don’t even want to _touch_ you,” Brock growls, keeping Bucky pinned long enough to dig his knee in the small of his back. Brock drags his tongue up the centerline of Bucky’s neck and Bucky squirms, pushing up into Brock’s knee as Brock struggles to control him.

“You’re such an asshole,” Bucky hisses, and rolls his head to the side to better expose the side of his neck. “Oh,” he helplessly sighs, while Brock’s tongue drags quickly from Bucky’s collar to his jaw. He licks Bucky again, twice on the neck and the back of Bucky’s ear, which fall to the side in response. “Hurry!”

Honestly, damn them _both_ for putting him in this position.

“That’s my pretty kitty,” Brock growls, roughly shoving a hand down the back of Bucky’s pants and extracts his magnificent tail from between the two of them. Bucky pants and pushes his hips back into Brock’s hand and shudders, hard. Steve hates this, but this is clearly their mating ritual. He turns away, more frustrated and angry than he has a right to be. It’s almost like the freedom he felt watching Bucky play baseball evaporated in the fifteen minutes that passed since the game ended. The energy that had struck Steve as so confusing and earth shattering dissipates, and he is harshly reminded what actual fucking animals felines could be to one another. It isn't just the regulations that kept humans and felines apart, it seems.

“What was that?” Bucky whispers harshly, between thick, distracting pants and Steve instinctively ducks. Now that their fighting had quieted down, apparently they could hear him crunching across the rough verge where the Hescos were lined up. “Stop Brock, we’re going to get caught,” Bucky’s voice goes high and desperate, but all Steve hears from Brock is a disinterested grunt. Steve takes a careful step, trying to get away from them both without being seen, like he was the one who would get in trouble if he was caught. “Brock, stop! I swear I hear something!”

“You’re not getting out of this that easy,” Brock snarls, quickly followed by the clear sound of fabric tearing.

Steve hears Bucky cry out, a sound so helpless and shocked that Steve’s heart wants to break. “Brock, _please...”_

That stops Steve in his tracks. Since when does he hear something like that and walk away? Cat behavior be damned, Steve knows a “no” when he hears one. “Hey! What's going on here?” Steve shouts, in his most authoritative officer’s voice. He practically stomps back to where he left them making as much noise as possible now.

Brock springs off Bucky quickly, tucking himself away and flattening out the front of his BDUs in an effort to hide his erection. Bucky is slower to rise and staggers, barely holding onto his pants. His BDU jacket is torn open, all the buttons missing down the front, and his undershirt is streaked with dirt. It’s a hell of a start, but at least Steve doesn't have to pull them apart by their ears.

“You know perfectly well that fraternizing is against regulations!” He shouts mostly at Brock, but both of them are standing at attention, backs straight and ears forward. Steve would be within his rights to strike Brock, right across the face as a minor field disciplinary action, and boy does he want to. “I’ll forget what I saw here if _you_ leave,” he turns a meaningful look at Brock whose ears sweep back compulsively before he corrects them. “And _never_ approach him again.” Both Brock and Bucky look up sharply at that, and Steve challenges Brock’s furious scowl with his own. “Well? Get out of here!”

Brock takes one more look at Bucky before he sneers, then spins on his heel and stalks off, tail lashing from side to side as he adjusts himself in his pants.

“You didn't have to do that, captain,” Bucky says. His voice is small and worried, like he wishes Steve had just stayed out of it, and Steve has to control the urge to keep shouting.

“No, I _should_ have done it much earlier. What were you thinking? You risk a formal reprimand in order to get your rocks off with _that_ cat? You clearly hate him. What’s worse, the Strike team is reckless and undisciplined and I was planning to file a formal complaint against Captain Ward. Now I can't, because it might drag my own feline unit into it thanks to you!”

Bucky stares at Steve’s feet while he dutifully receives his lecture, his shoulders squared off and his hands clasped behind his back at parade rest. His ears are forward and attentive, his tail hugs his leg, curving slightly around his boot at the tip. He doesn't argue and he doesn't flinch, and Steve thinks maybe his words aren't even sinking in. He makes a frustrated sound and backs away. Why did he even bother? “Just don't let me catch you doing it again. We still have an op to complete.”

“Yes, sir.” Bucky says, in a tone so respectful it makes Steve want to take all his cruel assumptions back already.

“Your team better be locked and loaded on the parade grounds as planned, at oh-two-thirty,” Steve says instead. “Now hit the showers, and don’t you dare fraternize with that asshole again.”

“Y-yes, sir,” Bucky replies, the waver in his voice barely perceptible, but still present.

“Why the hell—” _do you even want to,_ Steve wants to ask, but doesn’t. Instead he pinches the bridge of his nose and takes in a breath. “Forget it. Dismissed.”

Bucky immediately steps away from him, but when he reaches the edge of the line of Hescos he stops and looks back. “I know you’re trying to help. So, thank you,” he says. “I wish you hadn’t though,” he adds quickly, and walks away without another word, his tail trailing weakly behind him.

* * *

**Fanart**

Beautiful ink painting of cat Bucky ( _plus bonus squinchy eye'd Sebastian Stan face!!!_ ) given as a gift to me by [TheLittleBlackFox](http://thelittleblackfox.tumblr.com/)! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er some readers might notice that this work suddenly was reduced from 11 chapters down to 10. I didn't actually wind up cutting anything, but believe it or not when I was creating my outline in Google docs I just mis-numbered my chapter headers and didn't catch it til now. Sorry, the end is much sooner than you think!


	8. Operation Lemurian Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Handy dandy glossary:  
> NVG: Night Vision Goggles  
> BDU: Battle Dress Uniform (standard issue military filed uniforms)  
> PT: Physical Training  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

It starts to dump snow on the entire island at midnight.

Brock and Bucky had both expected to fuck at least one more time before the op, but Captain Rogers had spoiled that by issuing inescapably direct orders. When Bucky returned to the barracks that evening, he found his pillow and his blanket back behind the front room’s desk, so at least that was something. The toxic combination of anxiety and sexual frustration makes it impossible to sleep, and but at least he could close his eyes and bury himself under a blanket for a few hours before they were all back up again.

When he returns to the main bunk room, he and Brock can’t even look at one another while they buckle up their tactical gear. At least his heat seems to be held at bay, and the other cats seem wholly focused on mission prep. There’s some jostling, some snapping, but it’s clearly just the bravado of a bunch of young male felines, trash talking to hide how terrified they really were. Typical Army stuff.

Bucky slips his knives into the sheaths on his lower back, and two more into the drop sheaths on his thighs. He tucks one into each boot, and double-checks that the machete is secure on his back while Brock clips off a few, straightforward orders of encouragement to “hurry the fuck up” as the clock ticks down.

“Have you seen my second machete harness?” Brock asks him directly, in a low grumble under his breath.

“Bedpost,” Bucky answers, not looking up. Captain Rogers ordered them to not fraternize, but as mates it feels like they shouldn’t even really be talking to one another. As the only two F-5s it was impossible not to.

Brock doesn’t reply, but finds the equipment he needs within the tangle of various belts and holsters that hang from the back right side of his upper bunk. Brock prefers the double machete instead of the more subtle knives, and wears the two on his back. The straps make an X across his broad chest, when he clips the second into place. Bucky glimpses at the other male from under his eyelashes, trying to avoid appearing interested. For some reason seeing Brock in his all black tactical gear inflames the need between his legs to the point where he feels physically ill.

Great, Bucky thinks. Good timing.

The packed dirt on the parade grounds had been gouged by the cat’s ball game, but all the claw marks and deep ruts are hidden by a perfect white rectangle of snow, like a crisp sheet fitted over a mattress. The cats stand at attention, up to their ankles, in a single black line across the length of it, with the humans directly behind them, bundled up in white camouflage. Brock and Bucky have to stand directly beside one another, one line in front of the rest of the cats, aching.

Captain Rogers, Captain Ward, and Colonel Danvers look out over the one hundred personnel before them, and go over the high points of the operation, voices clear but the volume deadened by the piling snow. It doesn’t really matter, since the muster isn’t meant for real tactical review. By now, everyone knows exactly what their specific role is in the operation. It’s just a warm up in discipline, a chance for them to shake their last moment jitters and pinpoint all their energy to focus on the task.

For ninety six of the soldiers, the task is to secure the docks. For the four seniors, it’s to secure the HVT. Bucky tries to meet Captain Rogers’ eye while Colonel Danvers wraps up, but he’s looking straight ahead at perfect attention, like a statue. Rogers and Ward look nearly identical in their gear, faces covered by balaclavas and identical equipment strapped to their large frames. Bucky can scent Rogers in the air, and wishes the man would just look at him. It’s stupid, and he doesn’t know what he would have done anyways, if he had caught his attention. He just wants it.

Finally, Colonel Danvers gives the order to move out, and everyone splits off into their designated teams, quads of cats finding their human companions immediately, despite everyone’s identical appearance. By now they had been living and training together for weeks, and the cats scent out their humans without much effort. The entire force disperses within minutes into the transport vehicles waiting by the camp’s only gate. Brock, Bucky, Captain Ward and Captain Rogers ride together in a Humvee at the front of the convoy, driven by Dum Dum with a human from Strike operating the turret on the roof.

The hour and thirty minute drive from the camp near Neftegorsk to the docks at Okha go by slowly, but still faster than Bucky is ready for. Okha is the island’s political and trade center, with the residential area further inland and the infrastructure mostly clustered along their north-eastern shore. The city had been a global powerhouse for fossil fuels after the war, but recently descended into chaos after the American occupation cut their livelihood out from underneath them. As such the docks are not only strategic from a tactical position, but from propaganda as well. Since the RFA captured the docks, fliers with bold declarations of how they are solely responsible for liberating Russia’s industry from the American oppressors regularly show up in towns throughout the island. Bucky doesn’t know much more about the politics of the region or the American occupation, but he understands how industry is deeply rooted in the island’s culture, so when the Humvee rolls to a stop between the hollowed out warehouses that make up the perimeter of the shipping district he can’t help but feel the buildings are full of Sakhalin’s residents, angry at their trespass.

The rest of the convoy has peeled off to encircle the rest of the dockyards, to place the snipers in their nests, and to deploy the teams responsible for other support roles. The four of them—Brock, Ward, Rogers, and Bucky—are now on their own.

“CA to MC, position one locked,” Captain Rogers says into his throat mic, his white weapon already in his arms. Bucky has one knife held in his left hand, and takes up position in the lead. Brock has both machetes in hand, and takes up the rear, right behind Agent Ward. The snow has built up along the buildings, piling into the hundreds of window frames, giving tired bags under all of Sakhalin’s eyes. They quickly made their way through the perimeter and reached the fence. Bucky slipped his knife away, and used a pocket plasma torch to slice an opening into the links while Ward and Brock covered their flank and Rogers called in the second checkpoint. Bucky slips through the fence first and makes his way to the first row of containers where he signals for a sniper shot of the two guards, walking towards him.

A few seconds pass and both guards go suddenly rigid, then drop to the tarmac. Bucky slips over to them on all fours, hauls both bodies out of the walkway and in between two shipping containers before the rest of the team appears. Bucky scents the air and indicates for the team to halt, then slips away. He silently springs up to the top level of shipping containers and kills the guard patrolling towards them with a single twist of the human’s neck. He leaps to the next container before that human hits the metal, and does it again to the man walking the opposite direction. He drops back down to the group, and walks the team through the rest of the containers without incident. The entire process takes them about seven minutes, before the entire area erupts into chaos.

Bucky and Brock both flatten against their respective captains when the first mortars explode in great blasts of heat near them, lifting up the nearest stack of shipping containers and crashing them back down to earth. “Are they firing mortars at us?” Brock exclaims, barely believing it even as they hear the telltale sing of artillery flying over their heads. The second explosion is further off and Bucky actually laughs.

“I guess we were both wrong,” Bucky says, over the roar of the explosion further away. “These humans are fucking _idiots,”_ he blurts out.

They knew the alarm would be raised once the infiltration began, but for the RFA to blow up their own damn base to get at the tactical teams swarming around them was not something any of them planned for. Brock growls behind them—he can’t smell anything. Bucky coughs when he tries to scent the air himself, nodding in agreement. The sudden haze of acrid concrete dust is too thick for their sensitive noses, after whatever the insurgents thought they were targeting with their mortars disintegrated in the woof of flames.

Still, the parameters of the op haven’t changed, and the four sprint through the shipping containers now that most of the action was concentrated on the main entry while they wove their way closer to the northern warehouse. It rises high above all the other buildings in the dockyards, painted white and gleaming new amongst all the rusted, run down industrial buildings. Bucky keeps just ahead of the three others, transferring his knife to his mouth when he slips forward on all fours, then dropping it back in his left hand when he stands upright. When he indicates to the group that it’s safe to advance, he really only looks to Brock, communicating to him with only a subtle flick of his ears or rapid blink and the rearguard cat knows exactly how to respond. Their non verbal communication make cats invaluable field assets, and even above the din of combat and stink of fire, Brock and Bucky are flawless at it.

Bucky stops short, where the stacks of containers end before a wide expanse of open asphalt before the back of the warehouse. Beyond it are the wooden piers, and beyond that, the ocean. The snow is falling in flurries now, kicked up across the entire yard by the wind of the open space, and Bucky tries to scent any further humans before—

Bucky is knocked back so hard it takes a second of weightless free fall for his tail to snap around, and he lands on all fours, skidding back about three feet across the slick pavement. Another cat is crouched low in front of him, tail lashing out from side to side, ears laid back and teeth fully bared.

“American filth,” the cat hisses in Russian, and Bucky springs forward. The Russian cat is fast, and ducks and weaves around Bucky’s expert knife strikes. He’s wearing some kind of gloves, tipped with sharpened blades, like actual cat claws, and counters and sweeps at Bucky’s face. Bucky twists beneath him, slices through his thigh, but then gets caught by the other’s back hand and goes down beneath a joint lock, snarling with pain fueled adrenaline. Bucky twists out of the cat’s grip, and plunges the knife into his opponent’s throat, right where it meets his collar bone.

“Hail… Hydra,” the cat gurgles out, like a demand.

“Not fucking likely, _”_ Bucky hisses in response, and pulls the knife free. The cat collapses in a heap, it’s last living breath hissing out of the hole in its neck. Bucky staggers back and drops to his knees, trying to catch his breath and suddenly feeling quite warm all over. His body armor protected his core, but when he reaches back to his scruff his hand comes away covered in blood. “Shit.”

“Bucky,” Brock says, kneeling to a halt in front of him. His hands go to Bucky’s arms, shoulders, and pat the back of his ears, fidgeting as he worries. “You okay? Where did he get you?”

“Sorry,” Bucky huffs out, and no—oh, no, his head starts to swim as the scent of Brock’s sweat wafts into his nose. It’s stronger than even the lingering smoke and fumes from the explosions further south, and the pain washes off his body as he drinks it in. They don’t have time for that, but Bucky can’t trust himself to stand just yet.

“He okay?” Steve asks, his voice coming out high and worried. Brock inspects the back of Bucky’s neck and claps him on the shoulder.

“Just a scratch,” he quickly assesses, in a way that comes out almost like a question. “Up, on your feet.”

Bucky takes in a breath, shakes off the feeling, and gets to his feet, staggering just a little. The back of his neck is on fire and he can feel blood trickling down the neck of his vest. It’s probably not just a scratch, but there’s hardly time for a field dressing. “Caught me by surprise,” he weakly explains.

“Not your fault, kit,” Brock rumbles out, and pushes him forward, back into the lead of their established marching order.

Bucky shakes his head again, the distance from his mate clearing his thoughts, and flips his dagger into the backhand grip again. He leaves the dead cat where he fell.

They quickly make their way up the metal staircase leading up to the warehouse’s back entrance. When they reach the door Bucky communicates to Brock exactly how many enemy combatants he hears inside. The team lines up for the breach and Captain Rogers and Captain Ward both drop their helmet mounted NVGs down over their eyes. They hold, flattened against the wall for the signal. It takes several minutes, all four of them breathing heavily in the cold, until a giant release of static strikes the air and all the lights across the docks—and half the city of Okha—go out.

Captain Rogers kicks in the door, aiming his weapon high as he sweeps the room with suppressive fire. Bucky darts under his sightline, leaping inside on all fours to skirt around the cover inside. Captain Ward follows after, firing low in an opposite direction as Bucky’s advance, and Brock snakes in around him, both machetes out as he covers the active three inside.

Bucky kills four of the seven insurgents who had taken up position behind heavy metal crates. He slithers into their midst entirely unseen at first, until the fourth finally turns after catching the streak of his white tail in the dark. The fourth insurgent gets off a single shot and it goes wide, before Bucky slits his throat and rests his convulsing body gently onto the metal grating of the floor. One man makes a dash towards him, but collapses when Rogers’ gunfire puts holes through him, and Brock picks off the last one, brutally cutting his throat with his machete.

They reform at the catwalk and Captain Rogers tosses a grenade into the floor below into the midst of scrambling, screaming insurgents. It bursts with a geyser of wood after landing on a stack of crates, and Rogers and Ward lean over the rail to pick off the soldiers below from the high ground. They both hook cables onto the guardrail and leap over the edge touching down on the ground level on their toes. Brock and Bucky spring down to the bottom floor unaided, and split up to sweep both ends of the warehouse.

Bucky makes sure to push his knife into the hearts of a few desperately wounded insurgents, killing them quickly before silently moving on. He finishes his sweep at the main office doors, and cranes his neck to spot the flash of reflection of Brock’s wide open eyes. He motions the other cat over, and the team reforms again and line up for a second breach in the same order. Rogers kicks the door and aims high, Bucky sneaks in below, Ward rolls through and aims low, Brock takes up the rear. Rogers kills three men, Ward two others, and Bucky and Brock both freeze in their tracks instead of moving forward.

“Brock, report,” Captain Ward hisses, stepping tactically over a corpse to move further into the room. “What is it?”

Bucky’s heart is in his throat and he can feel the fur all over his body lift in terror. Brock isn’t doing much better, and drops to all fours with his ears laid back. Both of them pace a few steps side to side, like they are trapped behind an invisible barrier and can’t continue.

“What the fuck! Brock!” Captain Ward snaps, keeping his voice low.

“It’s bad,” Bucky says, and backs up a step, almost forgetting Brock is directly behind him. Brock paces to the side to avoid colliding into him but doesn’t go further into the room. He just nods, and doesn’t say anything. Bucky can’t stand it anymore and crouches low on his haunches, fighting the urge to run. “It’s… it’s bad.”

“What is it? Is it a bomb? Are we walking into a trap?” Captain Rogers still has his weapon up, and is peering through the green view of his night vision. He’s probably more shocked that Bucky is actually agreeing with Brock on something, rather than the actual sense of impending doom he walked into face first without a flinch.

“Not a bomb,” Brock says. “Like a smell. Like death.”

“Like fire,” Bucky adds, unhelpfully because fire and death smell nothing alike. It’s not that it smells like something actually burning, but rather gives one that innate fear of being caught in flames, unable to escape a smoldering, crackling death. It’s fear, the scent of it, the sense of it, and its power. It’s just impossible to explain that to the humans.

“And rot,” Brock says, and Bucky nods vigorously. It’s not just a smell, but an overwhelming urge to escape. If it weren’t for their training to protect their human companions at all costs, both Brock and Bucky would have bolted from the warehouse. “We shouldn’t go in there.”

“Go in where?” Captain Ward says, and he’s frazzled and anxious from the cats’ seemingly inexplicable reaction. “There’s nothing in this room.”

“The filing cabinet,” Bucky says pointing at it with his nose. Both his hands hold knives, and he remains crouched low, next to brock. “It’s false.”

Captain Rogers shoulders his weapon and walks past the rows of heavy metal desks, the computers all facing away from them, trying to hide their secrets from the invading force as they stalked across the office floor. Bucky looks at Brock, and they exchange a whole conversation of nervous gestures before Bucky falls back on his training and moves into the room, returning to the head of their line. Bucky stops short when he feels a tug on his wrist, and looks back at Brock’s worried expression. He’s sweating, and nervous, his eyes huge in the dark. Bucky pulls his hand free, but nods to show he appreciates the concern, then trots forward to meet up with Rogers.

Captain Ward is tugging open filing cabinets, shifting the locks open and closed, looking for the mechanism, while Captain Rogers stands back and examines the installed rows of heavy metal cases. He looks at the thin walls, squinting through the NVGs, then taps a few times on the edges of the cases. “Here it is,” he says quietly, and gives the case a hard shove.

“Star spangled man with the plan comes through again,” Captain Ward sasses, and stands back with his weapon ready as Bucky takes up pushing the case alongside Captain Rogers. The entire thing shifts back and then swings inwards, like an opening door, and at the end of the hall is a shining, chrome elevator door.

“That wasn’t in the plan,” Steve flatly responds.

The sense of death is so much worse in the small space, and Brock is nearly panting from fear. “Bucky,” he calls out under his breath, in a tone so desperate that both Captain Ward and Captain Rogers look back at him in surprise. He shrinks under their combined gaze, and swallows hard before he shakes his head to dismiss their attention.

Bucky approaches the elevator on all fours, gently presses the call button, then springs backward with his knife raised when the doors open, the light inside the cab immediately filling the hall. Ward and Rogers flip up their NVGs and start forward. Brock holds Ward by the shoulder, and Bucky stands to block Rogers.

“Oh, what now?” Captain Ward groans. “Does it still smell bad in there too, or what?”

“We can’t go in there,” Brock insists, and Bucky nods.

“It’s bad,” Bucky agrees. “It’s so bad, captain.”

Captain Rogers looks back to Ward, then to Bucky again. “What is it you think is going to happen?”

“I can’t explain it,” Bucky says.

“It’s bad,” Brock grumbles again. The elevator door slides closed after so many inactive seconds. “We should leave.”

Captain Rogers nods, and presses his throat mic. “CA to MC, at the final checkpoint and encountered unknown threat. Reconfirm priority one directives.”

“Priority one directives confirmed, captain. Secure the HVT,” crackles the voice over his earwig. “Identify nature of unknown threat.”

“SCFs identified a scent, can’t confirm origins but threat level is extreme,” Captain Rogers says, translating their panicked explanations into military lingo the colonel would at least understand. Bucky is already feeling the spike of adrenaline recede, knowing they weren’t going to go down into whatever it was that waited for them at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

“Operational objectives are not compromised by scaredy cats, captain. Proceed as ordered.”

Brock grunts, and Bucky shares a frown with him. _Scaredy cats!_

Captain Ward shrugs one shoulder. “Proceed as ordered,” he cynically repeats and goes to push the call button for the elevator again. Captain Rogers catches his wrist.

“In situations like these we’re allowed to execute field discretion,” he says. “I think we should stand down.”

“Absolutely not,” Captain Ward snaps. “We’re this close to nabbing the guy that’s been sniping our forces for months and you want to back down now? That piece of shit is hanging out in a spider hole and these animals are just too dumb to realize they’re just scared of going underground.”

Brock is so shocked that his ears go up again, despite the overwhelming instinct to lay them back against the sense of imminent attack. Bucky looks from Captain Rogers to Captain Ward, his mouth slightly open to take in the full scent of anxiety that wedges itself between the two humans.

“The cats are here for a reason, Grant. We should trust them.”

“You’re a fucking coward, _Steve,”_ Captain Ward says, and punches the call button. “Brock, here! Now!”

Brock inches forward, but his eyes go wide and his ears lay back when the elevator doors re-open.

Bucky doesn’t want the other cat to go. He’s arrogant, and an asshole, and a shitty soldier, but Brock and he were united in a special kind of hell together, both from Bucky’s heat and now this new unspeakable horror that awaited them at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Brock finally makes it into the elevator, and his human sneers at Captain Rogers. “I guess I’ll finish the op for the both of us then.”

 _Fuck_ Captain Ward. Brock looks Bucky in the eye, and doesn’t move. A silent goodbye.

“We can’t leave a man behind,” Bucky says, turning to Captain Rogers to plead with him.

Rogers hesitates for only a moment. “No, we can’t,” Rogers agrees, and they both quickly step into the elevator as the doors close.

“About time you found your balls,” Ward snarks, and shoulders his weapon as they line up in breach order, one last time.

Right before splitting to opposite sides of the cab, Brock puts his hand gently on Bucky’s scruff. The touch leaves a fresh sting of pain on his wound, but the reassurance is worth it and Bucky nods at him in response. If Rogers noticed the interaction, he didn’t show it.

The ride down takes a full two minutes.

The doors open into a dimly lit subterranean space where a massive regiment of computer servers stretch as far as the eye can see in all three directions from the elevator door. “What the hell...” Captain Ward breathes.

About twenty feet in front of them sits a squat, balding man, at a plain metal table with a laptop in front of him. “Ah, Captain Ward,” he says. “And company,” he adds with a slight twinge in his tone, like annoyance. He has a strange accent, not Russian, and his forehead is shiny in a way that suggests he’s not really nervous, but just always slightly sweaty. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon, but no matter. Time to go, eh?”

“Arnim Zola?” Captain Rogers checks, and the confident crack of his voice eases the feral snarl growing in Bucky’s chest.

“Yes, yes of course,” Zola says with a chuckle. He stands from his desk and both Bucky and Brock immediately drop onto all fours, while Rogers and Ward keep their white rifles on him. Zola pauses, looks bemused at their sudden reaction to the simple gesture of him standing up. “I am the one you came for, after all. Yes?”

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” Captain Ward orders. “Come out from behind the desk, now!”

“No need to be so rude,” the man says. His petulant remark is unsettling—but everything about him is unsettling, from his perfectly round spectacles to his bow tie. Bucky can’t discern if his round features and wispy thin hair gives him a baby face or something prematurely geriatric. Bucky bares his teeth, wants to tear Zola’s throat out when the little man smiles. “Your pets don’t seem to like me much. I’d be afraid for my safety if I got any closer.”

When Zola turns his gaze directly to them, Bucky practically feels his back light on fire with warning signals shooting up and down his tail. He can hear Brock’s sharp intake of breath on the opposite side of Ward.

“Stand down Brock,” Ward orders, and Rogers probably does the same, but Bucky can’t hear him since a sudden strange, euphoric release takes over his fear response. The rest of the world falls away, the banks of computers, the humans, and even the table evaporate and all there is in the world is himself, Brock and this strange little man wearing suspenders. He doesn’t know anything, except he must kill this person, and Brock must help him.

“Bucky! I order you to _stand down!”_ Captain Rogers bellows. Bucky freezes halfway between himself and Zola, unsure of when he actually moved forward. He forces himself to obey the order, pacing slowly back to Rogers’ side but remaining on all fours, just in case. Rogers and Ward approach Zola by themselves, leaving the two cats behind. Stupid. Wrong. Brock and Bucky exchange worried looks and neither one knows what to do.

“See? Nothing to be afraid of,” Ward says over his shoulder. He’s mocking the two of them but Ward sounds a bit nervous, like he’s actually pretty relieved it hadn’t turned out to be a monster in some primordial pit waiting for them down here after all.

Bucky catches Brock’s eye and realizes he’s thinking the same thing: The humans have _no idea_ who he really is. Arnim Zola chuckles when Captain Ward zip ties his hands behind his back.

The humans have no idea _what_ he really is.

“CW to MC, confirm HVT is secured,” Ward states clearly into his radio. “Confirm sitrep on the docks? Over.” Ward remained silent and then Rogers pressed a finger to his ear, frowning with concern. Bucky could normally hear the quiet chatter on their earwigs, but all that came through now was silence. “CW to MC, I repeat, HVT is secured. Do you copy? Over.”

“Must be shielded,” Rogers observes, looking over the computer banks. “That’s why none of this showed up on infrared reconnaissance. It’s massive,” he adds, and cranes his neck to look over row after row of server bays. Zola chuckles and Bucky feels another zing of anxiety sweep down his spine.

“Elevator is small for all five of us,” Ward grumbles. “I’ll take him up top, call it in.”

Captain Rogers nods and both Brock and Bucky stiffen. A whole new sense of desperation tears at Bucky’s instincts, that he shouldn’t separate from Brock at all costs. He takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself. It must be his heat, muddled up by this fucked up mission, driving him to stay close to his mate after all the adrenaline pumped through his blood. He catches Brock’s eye and Brock himself looks like he’s struggling to say something, holding the elevator door open as Ward shoves Zola towards it.

Rogers continues to be clueless, and inspects the desk Zola was sitting at, wakes up the strange, clear laptop there. “What is this?” He demands.

“Oh, you’ll see soon enough,” Zola replies, and Ward gives his shoulder another shove to the elevator. Brock taps the button, and lays his ears back every time he catches Zola in his sights. Bucky feels a pang of urgency when he watches Brock take his first step inside.

“I’m sure our tech people will have a field day in this place,” Rogers says, absentmindedly looking over the banks of computers. He shuts the laptop lid, tucks it under his arm, when Zola turns to look out from the elevator.

“No they won’t,” he says through a terrible grin.

Bucky isn’t entirely sure what he sees next. The elevator doors are gliding closed, and Zola’s face cracks open, like the hard shell of a nut. Rogers cries out in shock, and something—Zola’s tongue maybe, or another appendage—bolts violently through the gap between the doors. Bucky moves without a thought, lunges towards it, at the same time as he hears Brock strike inside the elevator. Rogers is just inches out of Bucky’s reach, and Zola’s bizarre, extending limb slashes into his leg. Bucky has it between his teeth, wrenches it free from Rogers in less than a heartbeat, but the captain still stumbles to his knees, clutching his thigh where it had left an angry stripe of red across the white camouflage. The writhing thing in Bucky’s mouth snaps free when the elevator doors close on it, then shrivels into a putrid strip of flesh, even as he spits it out onto the ground.

“What the hell!” Rogers shouts, but before either of them could even start to answer that question they both freeze.

Bucky’s reaction time is what saves Steve’s life. There’s a tiny whine, like an energy buildup, that Bucky recognizes as an electrical fuse igniting. He grabs Rogers by the back of his jacket and hurls him away from the nearest server bank as it explodes, then drags him as he sprints away from the successive blasts. Rogers gets his feet under him, and tries to sprint along beside him, but stumbles as the percussion of the blasts catch up.

Bucky drags Captain Rogers in a desperate scramble under some kind of metal grate, where the cement drops away into an endless pit. The last thing Bucky thinks as they tumble into darkness is how fortunate they are to die in a fire rather than trapped in an elevator with Arnim Zola.


	9. Buried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated glossary for this chapter!
> 
> SERE Training: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" (military training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct)  
> NVG: Night Vision Goggles  
> BDU: Battle Dress Uniform (standard issue military filed uniforms)  
> PT: Physical Training  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

Steve wakes up to an odd sound. At first he thinks it’s a helo, chopping away outside the barracks, unloading more equipment for their operation. Then he remembers the operation is already underway, so perhaps it’s gunfire. Then he remembers everything, and shouts himself awake.

He coughs and sputters, feeling extra weight on his chest from too much inhaled cement dust. It takes him a moment to clear his throat just to take a few good breaths. The air is stale and close, like he is underneath a pile of heavy blankets. He blinks a few times, wondering why he can't see, until he figures out that it's just the impenetrable darkness of being deep underground. That’s when he hears the sound again, and realizes it’s a cat, purring.

“Bucky?” He says, and coughs again when the strain of speaking tickles all the dust still caught in his larynx. “Buck? Sound off, soldier!”

There’s still no response, just that steady, deep purr that somehow doesn’t make Steve think Bucky’s safe or comfortable or okay at all. He reaches up to his NVGs and struggles with the helmet mount. Something had apparently struck him hard in the head, since the device is twisted at an odd angle, the mount jammed. He snaps the goggles out of their protective shell and brings them down to his eyes. He’s in some kind of cement chamber, caught in a small triangle of open space between the debris and the wall behind him, about four feet tall and six feet wide. A girder of twisted metal seems to have propped up a giant slab of cement that had crashed in after them, but Steve doesn’t trust it to hold for long with the sounds of shifting rock coming from above. He looks around the tiny sanctuary and sees Bucky laying on his side a few feet away, unmoving.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says gently. His voice comes out like he’s speaking under water and he’s not sure if that’s the closeness of the walls or the ringing in his ears from the explosion fucking up his hearing. He coughs again, and turns to put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder but shudders and cries out when his own injury suddenly comes alive. He clutches his left thigh, and sees the ragged gash extending down from his belt all the way down to his knee. Whatever mark Zola left on him is swallowed up by this fresh injury, and all Steve can make out in the green feed of his NVGs is torn BDU fabric, already stiff and crusting over with blood. “Oh, Jesus,” he breathes out, and clutches his leg fiercely in a moment of panic. “Oh, man.”

Steve’s been injured before, but this is worse, and has to give himself a five-count of panic before he is able to fall back on his SERE training. He pulls off his gloves with his teeth, and has to push his helmet back up when he strikes the back wall too many times and it falls in front of his eyes. He’s gasping in pain, but still functioning enough, now that he has to move with a purpose. He fishes his field dressing out of his upper left pocket, jams a one-time-use syringe of antibiotics into the wound, then opens the quikclot dressing with his teeth. He forces his fingers into the tears of his pants, then forces the material apart in a sloppy rip.

Once he gets a better look at the wound he bites his bottom lip so hard he tastes blood, just to stop himself from screaming. There is something about actually seeing a grievous injury that triggers a full blown pain response, and he gasps, several times, before he can even think straight again and doesn’t cry. It’s hard to manage the bandage and the NVGs, but he unfurls it down his leg and somehow gets enough gauze on the dressing to hold it somewhat in place. As he dresses the wound (definitely _not_ crying) He tries not to think about where in the midst of all that torn flesh he was scratched by that thing that came out of Zola’s face.

Had he imagined it? Was it actually just some kind of weapon? Did Zola just _throw_ something at him? The pain keeps him from focusing too hard on these desperate questions, and in a way he's grateful for that distraction. Pain is something he’s familiar with. Injuries are something he knows. It's simple, to focus on those things.

He’s breathing too much, sweating and exhausted, and finally he collapses back against the wall when he ties the last bit of gauze just above his knee. He knows he’s not finished yet though, and drags himself to Bucky, biting his bottom lip raw as he stifles his own scream. When he gets closer he lifts the NVGs again and the display winks out.

“Fuck,” he gasps, but the display reappears before he can get any more upset about it. If he winds up buried underground without a shred of light he might just actually shoot himself and be done with it. “Bucky,” he says, and touches the cat’s shoulder. He can feel the vibration of Bucky’s purr through the pads of his fingers, and shakes Bucky gently. “Bucky what’s the matter?”

Steve can barely move himself, and has only the one free hand if he keeps the NVGs up well enough to actually see. Bucky is twisted on his side at an odd angle for a human, but Steve doesn't think that's an issue with his natural flexibility. The problem is the thick dark stain of blood in the dust under him. Steve gently touches the back of Bucky's neck, where the Russian cat had scratched him earlier, and sees a much worse wound than he had let on. “Oh, Bucky…” he whispers. The ugly cuts have long since dried and even though it looks miserable—three long, ragged tears through the patch of fur on the scruff of Bucky’s neck—it’s unlikely that’s what caused the mess of blood on the floor.

He rolls Bucky onto his back as well as he can in the tight space, and sees the glistening darkness of fresh blood on Bucky’s forehead. “Oh, no,” he whispers. Head wounds bleed like a son of a bitch. He strokes the hair away from Bucky’s face, all the way back, and winds up running his hand over the tops of Bucky's ears. They press back easily, soft as downy feathers, and spring forward as the cartilage snaps back into place. The contact interrupts the distressed purring, so Steve does it again, gently stroking while measuring his own breathing, trying to conserve the air in the space now that he isn’t gasping in pain.

Once he's calmed down, he quietly opens a second field dressing, cleans Bucky’s wound with an alcohol pad, and presses the clotting material against the gash. He carefully unwinds what remains of his gauze to hold the bandage in place, then leans his own throbbing head against the wall. His helmet thunks hard against it, scraping along the sheer sides of their prison, so he removes it altogether and tosses it aside.

If the rest of the rubble came down now, it wouldn’t exactly do much good anyways.

“Wish they made helmets that fit you guys,” he quietly laments, petting through Bucky’s hair, stroking back his ears. He can feel the fluffy soft fur under Bucky’s hairline, can see the spots from his ears continue down below the sides of his head where his hair usually hides the area human ears would be. All the cats did that, Steve contemplates as he gently strokes the fur. Even in the military, cats hide the sides of their faces with long hair, like they don’t want humans to be uncomfortable with their uncanny dissimilarities. He shifts his weight enough to fish a cold pack out of his hip pocket, crushes the chemical agents within it and then gently sets the white crinkly plastic against Bucky’s head as it frosts over in his hands. “I hope that feels nice,” he whispers.

He switches off the NVGs to save battery power, sets them in his lap, and stays there at Bucky’s side, keeping the ice pack in place with one hand and gently petting him with the other. Steve knows he should be looking for a way out, coming up with some contingency plan to dig or call for help. Right now he just can’t think of next steps.

Instead he tries to slow his breathing, and prays.

* * *

Only when Steve hears Bucky groan does he realize he’s drifted off, so he comes awake with a start and a fresh woof of pain overtakes him. He has to stop himself from crying out and instead focuses on Bucky. “You awake?” He asks, only a little breathless, and pats around on his lap for the NVGs.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yes, sir,” he corrects. He coughs and shifts his weight, and Steve takes a look at him through the green wash of night vision. He watches Bucky sit up, hold his head in alarm, and then gently inspect the edges of the bandage. His tail slides up and around, like it’s waking up on its own, slightly out of step with its owner. Bucky draws his knees up and takes a better seated position next to Steve, squatting on his haunches with his tail wrapped around his feet. It reminds Steve of hiding at the bottom of his mom’s closet, pretending he was playing hide and seek when really he was just hiding from his dad. At least now he has a friend.

Bucky’s eyes are enormous glowing coins in the refraction of the night vision, and he blinks owlishly as he takes in the space around them.

“It’s dark,” he says.

“No kidding,” Steve snorts and he sees the whites of Bucky’s teeth as he grins. It would be creepy if it wasn’t such a relief to see him smile.

“Even for me,” Bucky chuckles, then leans towards him. “You’re bleeding. I can smell it. Did you hurt— Oh, my god!” He slightly stumbles into Steve when he catches sight of his bandage, touches Steve’s leg with worried fingers as he examines it. “Who taught you how to field dress? This is a mess.”

“Would have been nice to get a little help but someone was sleeping on the job,” Steve says with a good natured groan, and Bucky laughs.

It’s obscene to laugh in their current situation, and completely irresponsible with as little air as they have, but also contagious. Now that Bucky got started, it catches hold of Steve, and he actually has to wipe away a tear as his giggles persist long after he forgets what was so funny. “Oh, I think we’re getting light-headed from lack of oxygen,” he says, as his chuckles subside.

“I guess dying of asphyxiation isn’t such a bad way to go,” Bucky concedes and Steve laughs again.

“It’s literally considered one of the worst _possible_ ways to die,” he says, and snorts when he tries to contain his renewed laughter.

Bucky sighs and touches the bandage on his head again, and suddenly the mood in their tiny sanctuary becomes somber. “Thank you for this,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry I got us trapped down here.”

Steve catches his breath, coughs, and starts over. “What are you talking about?” He argues. He’s not using his NVGs, but can tell Bucky is looking at him in the pitch blackness. “You saved my life. And you tried to stop us from coming down here in the first place. If I had listened to you—”

“You did listen to me, sir. I wanted to follow Brock down here. Didn’t want to let him go alone with Captain _fucking_ Ward,” he grumbles the last part candidly, probably because he knew Steve was on the cusp of saying something similar.

“I thought you hated that cat,” Steve says, trying to soften his tone. He wasn’t going to bring up the fraternization, but even without their violent sex would have been surprised how close Bucky stuck with the other male.

“I do,” Bucky says. “But I couldn’t let him come down here with that… that _thing.”_

Steve frowns. Right. Zola. Steve shivers at the sudden memory. “What was he?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky huffs, on the cusp of sounding annoyed. “Arnim Zola. He’s… he was just…” Bucky growls and shifts uncomfortably. “He was just wrong.”

“That’s not good enough,” Steve flatly states, because it wasn’t even _close_ to good enough to describe what he just saw. “You and Brock clearly knew something was wrong with him. And his face. What did he hit me with?”

“I don’t know what the hell was wrong with his face,” Bucky defensively snaps. “I don’t know what came out of him. It was just a feeling. I just know it was wrong.” Maybe it was how they were trapped or what they just saw, nearly being crushed to death or blown up, but Bucky’s voice has taken on a sharp edge to it that Steve hasn’t heard before.

Bucky was _scared._

“I don’t understand,” Steve admits, and Bucky gives a little groan, like even he’s disappointed in his own inability to communicate.

“I know. I can’t explain it though. This place— it’s _like_ a smell, only not really. It’s thick in the air, from that elevator room all the way down. But it’s more than that.” Bucky huffs again. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know what it was.”

Steve thinks about that for a moment, about instinctual fears—fire, looking off the edge of a building, spiders (even though he’d never admit that one.) Humanoid felines are known for their predatory instincts, their tactical vision, and perfect physicality. Maybe Zola triggered something similar, some sixth sense that Steve could never access with his limited human senses. “Have you felt anything like it before?”

Bucky hums, shifts his weight again. “Have you ever had a nightmare so awful that you wake up and your body is still all pins and needles from it? It’s like fear, but there’s also the smell of your own sweat and it makes you a little nauseous.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Steve says. He doesn’t think he’s ever smelled his own fear sweat before, and he wonders what kinds of nightmares Bucky has that make him sick to his stomach. It never occurred to him that cats even had dreams.

“It’s like walking into a cloud of that feeling. It made me feel a little dumb, like I could only hold onto one thought at a time.” Bucky shudders and takes in a deep breath through his nose. Then he suddenly shifts, ears perking up, and his face tilts up as he scents something. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?” Steve stupidly replies, and takes up the NVGs again to peer at Bucky through the green display. It flickers a few more times before it comes alive. He finds Bucky kneeling by the metal girder, looking up and down the length of it, his face lead by his nose. “Smell something?”

“Water,” Bucky answers. “And it’s not coming from above.”

Bucky crouches low, gingerly touches the giant pile of teetering rubble with the very tips of his fingers, and Steve holds his breath. He pushes away the thought of using his rifle to kill himself for a second time, but doesn't push it too far out of reach. He’d be damned if he was buried alive.

Though of course, they are already buried alive.

Steve shudders and Bucky looks back at him. “You okay, sir?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Just… it’s a tight space.”

“Not too tight, sir,” Bucky says, matter of factly, and Steve smiles. He allows himself the selfish feeling of relief to have Bucky there with him. “There’s a drainage pipe here,” he says, and looks back to Steve with those huge, glowing eyes. His fingers are touching a little metal corner, like a vent frame, and he’s grinning. “Big enough to fit through.”

Bucky’s excitement has caught his attention, and he feels something like survival instincts drag him away from his claustrophobia. “This must be some kind of drainage pit, to keep the server room upstairs from flooding,” he theorizes, trying to look up again through the rubble. It’s impossible to see any sign of what used to be the server room, but he’s just going through the motions. “It might lead to the sewers, or maybe the ocean.”

“Or a deeper reservoir,” Bucky says with a tempered little shrug. “But it’d be nice to have enough room to stand. Grab ahold of that.”

Steve tries to manage between the NVGs and his grip on a loose sheet of cement, so he puts them in his pocket while Bucky guides his hands to the right spot. They lift the slab together and the entire plug of debris above their heads shifts, just enough to make them freeze.

A few small chunks of cement crumble away and gravel clatters to the floor, but nothing big collapses above them. Still, they hold in place for a few more minutes, listening to nothing but their timid breathing just in case.

“This is scary,” Steve admits in a whisper.

“I think I peed,” Bucky says, one upping him and Steve laughs.

They try again, Steve blindly hauling the cement on Bucky’s say so, the finally collapses to his knees when it shifts out of the way, trying not to scream from the agony burning up the whole side of his body from his injury.

“Captain, are you—”

“Fine, fine,” Steve pants out, waving away Bucky’s concern. He puts the NVGs back up to his face as Bucky turns to the small opening, and tosses aside a few cables and twisted sheet of metal that used to be a server rack to clear the space in front of the grate. It’s much older than the high tech facility above them, with rust caked in the edges in great patchy flakes. Bucky wedges his knife at the hinge and beats the butt of the handle with a rock. The knife snaps the old metal away from the wall, and the grate comes free with a thud in the dust. They both grin like idiots at their tiny achievement, and Steve shuffles back while Bucky peers into the corrugated pipe.

“I’ll go first,” Bucky offers. “I can help you through if the way is clear.”

Steve shouldn’t argue, even though now he wants to. It’s Bucky’s job to do things like this, even if Steve wasn’t injured, and he knew the cat was good at it. Still, when he sees the tip of that fluffy tail disappear into the tiny crawl space, he can’t help but feel a bubble of panic rise up, warning him that Bucky has left their safe little cubby and got himself trapped in a far worse situation. Steve shuffles closer to the opening, and peers down the tiny passageway with the NVGs.

Steve feels a tick of hopelessness, gazing into the darkness before him. The night vision only extends a few feet, and Bucky is long beyond that point. He can hear the cat’s quiet shuffle, but can’t make out how far away he is, or if the pipe was sending them anywhere closer to the surface. Unless the pipe went up, there’d be no way it could lead directly to an outlet. Steve remembers how long the elevator ride down took, so they must be far lower than sea level at this point. Besides, if there was fresh air coming in Bucky would have scented it before they even started digging. ‘Water,’ was all he had said, and Steve wonders for a moment if Bucky could tell the difference between saltwater and fresh.

“Captain,” Bucky calls back to him. “I found the end. It’s not far. See if you can make it.”

Steve could use a bit of bullshit bravado at this point, but he’s drawing a blank on anything scrappy to say. Steve’s problem is that he’s pretty sure forcing himself through a tiny, freezing pipe with a gash down his entire leg is the absolute worst thing he’s ever lived through. The claustrophobia of combat crawling through the ribbed metal tube would be horrible enough on its own, but the pain from his leg makes every inch of it a special kind of agony as he drags his wound over the cold steel. He wishes he could have gone through on his back, but the pipe is so small that he can’t get his elbows underneath himself to push forward.

For once, Steve misses the skinny brat he was as a freshman in highschool, before he had an earth shattering growth spurt and exploded into a six-foot-three slab of beef. His equipment doesn’t help, and the large, bulky jacket for the Russian coastal winter seems like a huge mistake as the air feels like it starts to close in around him. Even if he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of suffocating, the impenetrable darkness is starting to feel physically heavy, especially when he realizes he can’t reach his NVGs where they are currently stashed in his cargo pocket.

The darkness is so thick, Steve starts to imagine that he’s breathing it into his lungs like inky black sludge.

The horrific image of Zola’s face, the completely inhuman way it split open just before he was attacked, floats to the top of Steve’s memory even as he tries to control his fear. Panic fizzes through him and his lungs suddenly don’t work quite right. He needs to see _daylight,_ or any light at all, or he was going to go crazy. He needs to breathe something other than this stale, dusty air that was still tinged with ozone from the explosion above. The massive weight of rock and debris above them starts to crush against his shoulders as he squeezes through the pipe, and he cries out in alarm when he thinks that maybe the pipe has shrunk.

He can’t actually make it all the way to the end that Bucky had promised was right there in front of him!

Before he knows it, Bucky is hauling him up from under his arms, and he stumbles free into open air, gasping in the dark. “It’s okay,” Bucky says, and helps Steve to move away from the pipe before setting him against the wall. The closeness of Bucky’s body as he lowers Steve to the floor feels almost like a hug and Steve wishes he could cling to him, even as he pushes the cat away to settle himself against the wall. “It’s dark, but it’s way bigger in here. We can finally breathe now.”

Steve nods, not trusting himself to speak, and clutches his leg while he takes in breath after breath of slightly cleaner air. With shaking fingers, Steve holds up the NVGs, and sees nothing but a blank screen. “Shit,” he whispers. He strikes the side of the unit and sees a flicker of green. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“They break?”

“Maybe,” Steve says, and strikes them again. The display blinks on for a few seconds and he quickly sweeps the room. He’s sitting just before a ledge to a pit so deep he can’t see the bottom, and when he glances around realizes the structure they’re in is so large he can’t see any of the walls within the range of the night vision. He feels like he’s in a vast space, like an olympic swimming pool. The display goes black again, and Steve sighs. “Percussive maintenance only works so well. So… exactly how well can you see in here?”

“Better than you,” Bucky answers, and Steve can practically hear the smile on his face. “But… Not very well. There’s a pit about four feet in front of us. There’s a sudden drop so don’t go near the edge of it. I looked down there, but couldn’t see the bottom. I can see the pipe we came out of, the wall it’s in. The ceiling is low, only a foot or so above our heads. I can’t see the end of the room though, or across the pit. The walls are cement. They’re weeping with moisture, but I don’t hear any water. Just smell it.”

Steve nods along with Bucky’s detailed description. “I have two glow sticks,” he explains, remembering that he isn’t _completely_ useless. “They last about twenty minutes. You?”

Bucky clicks his tongue. “Not issued any lights,” he admits and drops to his haunches next to Steve. “Never actually needed them before. I have the CO2 laser, I guess. It really only had enough juice to cut through the fence.”

Steve shifts, hisses at the bolt of pain that sends up his leg, and retrieves the two plastic rods from inside a long pocket of his BDUs. “Here,” he says, handing one to Bucky. “Just crack it in the middle. Bend it in half.”

Bucky takes the stick, cracks the little capsule on his first try and holds it away from him as the green glowing light begins to radiate outward. “Nice,” he says and Steve can see his huge, round pupils vertically contract ever so slightly as they adjust to the fresh light. “Wow, you look like shit.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself, pal,” Steve says, and grins even though he feels a sting of tears from the overwhelming agony in his leg. Somewhere in the hell of the pipe he crawled through, the slice of pain had turned molten, and it burned like he was holding it too close to an open flame. It hurt before, but now it _really_ fucking hurt and Steve can feel all the muscles in his body clenching as it washes over him.

“I’m going to scout the perimeter of this… place,” Bucky says, and looks left and right as he tries to pick a direction. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it won’t just be a giant circle.”

“I don't know about you,” Steve says, and can tell his voice is shaking with it now. “But I feel like we’re due some luck.”

“If I get too far, I’ll come back,” Bucky says, trying to reassure him without sounding like he was trying to reassure him. Steve appreciated the effort. “Just… don’t bleed to death while I’m gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Steve groans, and drops his head back with a thunk. Bucky puts the glow stick between his teeth and is gone, the green light receding faster than Steve is ready for. He watches it turn about twenty yards away, cross over, and then start heading back. Bucky apparently found the edge of the chasm in front of them, and was now on the other side of it. Steve watches the glowstick continue along the far wall, pause for a moment just opposite him, and then continue until it reaches another turn, before coming back his way. If he was judging right, the pit was about fifty yards by twenty.

And a circle.

The green light approaches and Bucky trots to a halt, coming up on his legs before he spits the stick back into his hand.

“Bad news and good news,” Bucky says. He’s panting, but not heavily, like a human would have been after sprinting a hundred and forty yards.

“Please tell me the only bad news is that it’s a circle,” Steve says, not ready to hear anything worse.

“The bad news is it’s a circle, no obvious way in or out. The good news is that there’s a section of the wall that isn’t weeping. I think it might be new, so maybe it’s a cemented over doorway or something. I don’t think I could break it down myself, so…” Bucky trails off and looks meaningfully down at Steve.

“So I’m going to have to get off my ass and come help,” Steve says.

“Yes, sir,” Bucky confirms. The glow stick doesn’t produce a hell of a lot of light, just enough for Steve to see Bucky’s apologetic wince.

It takes a bit of complaining and more than a few breaks for Steve to finally make it to his feet, but once he has his arm slung around Bucky’s shoulders with Bucky’s firm grip wrapped around his waist, it’s not actually so hard to shuffle along. He thinks they make good time, before he notices the glow stick already fading before they make the first turn. It’s taken him probably close to fifteen minutes to cover the same distance Bucky had in fifteen seconds. “It’s dying so fast,” he laments, holding the stick in his hand since Bucky’s hands are full from dragging his worthless hide around.

“It’s fine. It’s more than enough for me,” Bucky says. Steve realizes that somewhere along the line, Bucky had ditched his leather field vest and Steve could feel the heat radiating off of him like a furnace. Maybe it wasn’t just Bucky, maybe the chamber they were in was actually hot. He couldn’t really tell anymore, through his own fever and his sweat and his struggle to keep upright.

“I gotta stop,” Steve pants, so Bucky stops, lowers him so that his back is against the wall again. “I’m sweating like a pig in this,” Steve says, and unzips his heavy jacket. He had abandoned his helmet, gloves, and his balaclava back in the sanctuary, but it was time for the jacket to go.

“You’ll need it when we get out of here,” Bucky says, and Steve detects a thread of worry in his tone but chooses to ignore it. He was going to boil alive if he didn’t get out of that coat. Bucky frets, paces back and forth when Steve drops the coat to the ground. “It’s ten below outside, sir,” he insists.

“Well, we’re not outside yet,” Steve sasses back, the heat making him feel a bit punchy. “I’ll never make it if I die of heat stroke.” He manages to transfer all his remaining field supplies into his surviving BDU pockets, re-buckles his tactical belt over his hips, and leaves the heavy coat behind. Bucky grumbles something borderline insubordinate under his breath as he hoists him back up to his feet, but Steve doesn’t mind. Now that he’s just in his underarmor, he can feel the heat of Bucky’s skin through the thin fabric, and the hard line of his muscles where his arm is wrapped around Steve’s waist. It feels nice, even through the burn of his fever. “Jesus you’re hot,” he blurts out, and colors when he hears the innuendo begging to be made.

“Mm hm,” is all Bucky says in response.

They finally make it to the spot Bucky had mentioned, and Steve immediately sees why Bucky would think it was a doorway. The pale cement stands out against the darker walls of the main structure, even in the what remained of the glow stick’s dim light. Bucky lets Steve brace against the cold damp wall beside it, and he slides carefully down to the floor. “Just, let me rest a minute,” Steve says, trying hard not to sound like he’s complaining. The wall is so cold on his back, and the immediate relief is like a drink of water.

 _Mmm,_ Steve thinks. _Water._

“I think we should toss this one in the hole, see how far down it is,” Bucky says, stepping away. “Then we can light another one, and work on this.”

“Only the one left,” Steve reminds him, but tosses the green glowing dot over the edge. It doesn’t take too long to clatter to the bottom, and rolls further along, like the chamber below was severely slanted.

“Wow,” Bucky whispers and leans further over, chasing the sight of the glowstick as it's swallowed up by the darkness. “There’s a huge drain at the bottom. Like a spillway for a major road. What the hell was this originally made for? A cistern? For seawater? What would be the point of that?”

“Russians,” Steve says, shrugging against the wall, figuring that was as good a reason as any. “The Army Corps of Engineers can figure it out or maybe the Japanese will know.” Steve leaves off saying, _if we ever get out of here._

He turns to the side, trying to make out the dry patch of cement beside him, but he’s blind again in the complete darkness around them. Instead, he presses one hand against the rough, unfinished texture of the patch and gives a thoughtful hum. “I have two full mags. A single grenade. I’d worry about ricochet down here. And collapsing the entire thing down on our heads. Again.”

“I can use my knife, chip away at it, like a chisel. I’ll save whatever’s left of the CO2 laser, just in case that doesn’t work. We can take turns, if it takes too long. If we make a big enough hole, maybe your radio will work.”

Steve nods, pulls his hand away. There’s specs of grit stuck to his sweaty palm. Whoever set this cement was in a hurry. “If our guys are still up there,” he says carefully, trying not to suggest that they’d be left behind on purpose.

“Do you think Brock and Captain Ward made it out,” Bucky asks. “With that thing.”

Steve waits a beat before answering, feels fresh sweat slip under the collar of his under armor. “I hope they did.”

Bucky is still for a moment. Steve is sure that Bucky was hoping for the opposite but admits nothing before going back to work. Steve hadn’t seen what happened in the elevator after Zola’s attack, but can’t imagine Ward or Brock would have gone down without a fight. He didn’t care for the other captain or his cat, but he didn’t want his fellow soldiers to have died down here, regardless.

 _With that thing,_ he thinks, matching Bucky’s disgust.

Bucky sets to striking the knife against the wall with precise, measured taps, seeking any part of the wall that might have some give to it, a seam or a weak spot. Steve can hear some of it crumble, and clatter onto the floor like sand, but Bucky sighs in frustration as he works around the space.

“Wish I had a hammer,” he laments. Striking the butt of one knife with another. “Ruining perfectly good knives.”

“Wish I had some morphine,” Steve says with a wince.

“And a steak,” Bucky adds, because they are both obviously in dreamland now so they might as well enjoy themselves.

“Brian McFreely,” Steve mumbles, feeling exhaustion settle in as he listens to the steady rhythmic tapping. The wall is so cold at his back he shivers. His fever seems to have finally started to go down. “In a hot tub.”

“Who the hell is that?”

Steve wants to laugh. Bucky never swore so much around him before, and now the cat can’t seem to stop himself. Something about that made Steve grateful. “Just the all star pitcher of the Chicago Cubs. Good ol’ Mickey Free.”

“Ah,” Bucky says through his smirk. “Thought he was playing like a twelfth grader.”

“Yeah, but he looks so amazing in those tight, white pants.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, like he just put the pieces of a puzzle together. “That explains why you like professional baseball so much.”

“It’s a gentlemen’s sport,” Steve argues, offended on behalf of the sport. “It’s got a sophisticated set of rules! There’s way more strategy than how cats play.”

“Hey!” Bucky laughs out. “I saw you cheering. Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

“I did,” Steve says, and finds an easy laugh of his own. With his adrenaline dropping off and the chill setting in, Steve starts to feel a bit giddy. It helps to smile, to talk about something other than their current shitty situation. “I really did, actually. I think the other guys did too. You should play more often, and let us know so we can come watch.”

“Hm,” Bucky says, and pauses for a second in his chiseling to run his fingers over the patch he’d been working on. “It’s not exactly something we do for the humans to watch.”

“What? Why not? It’s incredible. I’ve never seen cats move like that before.”

“It’s just… humans watch everything we do. We perform for them all the time,” Bucky explains, not realizing somewhere along the line he says “them” like Steve isn’t one himself. He’s a little distracted, and pushes his knife into a little groove he’s made, working it around to test the texture of the cement. “It’s nice to have something we really only do for ourselves.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “In that case… I’m sorry I crashed your game. You could have told me, you know.”

“No, I couldn’t have.”

Steve doesn’t understand but Bucky’s tone makes it clear the conversation is over. “So,” he starts again, trying to recapture the ease of their previous banter. “You know the kinda guy I go for. What about you? Is...Brock the kinda cat you, er, _typically_ go after?”

The tapping suddenly stops. “No,” he answers flatly. “Brock is not my type.”

Steve can sense the agitation in Bucky’s voice, knows that he should try one more time to change the subject. “What would have happened after your baseball game, if I hadn’t shown up?” Oops.

The tapping picks up again. Steve can hear the knife drag and grind, like even the cement was resisting this conversation. “It’s just like you said, sir. I was getting my rocks off. Made bad choices.”

“Didn’t sound like you were making much of a choice at all.”

Bucky snorts, but his small laugh matches his work, chipping away at something broken. “Brock’s a pussycat. I was fine.”

“He threw you against the Hesco shed, you were hardly fine,” Steve challenges, then winces when he realizes his mistake.

“That wasn’t—” Bucky pauses as it sinks in. “How long were you standing there?”

“Long enough. I wasn’t going to get involved.” Steve shakes his head, remembers what happened  in the showers and thinks better of admitting he had seen that too. “Figured you guys were just… I don’t know. Into each other.”

“Then why did you?” Bucky asks, bitter and accusing.

“When someone says they don’t want to, and then the other guy does it anyway, that’s assault. I may be a bit lenient on fraternizing regs, but that stops at rape. He was clearly crossing a line.”

“For humans, maybe.”

“For anyone!”

“For humans,” Bucky says, doubling down with a hard _thwack!_ against the crumbling wall. “Minor field disciplinary actions are also assault, when you do it to a human. Drafting human children into the military wouldn’t even be _considered—_ ” Bucky stops, takes in a breath, like he suddenly stopped himself from sprinting over an edge he hadn’t noticed was dropped in his path.

“Bucky…” Steve wants to apologize, but for what? For the whole world being the way it is? Isn't Bucky proud to be in the Army? Grateful? It's one of the best lives a cat could hope for, especially an ungelded male like Bucky.

“I don’t think,” Bucky starts over, his tone shifts to something a bit more neutral as he backs out of the conversation. “I don’t think I want to talk about it. If that’s ok. You were right. I never should have risked fraternizing and I appreciate the chance you gave me to avoid reprimand, sir.”

“Sorry,” Steve finally says, though he’s not really sure what he’s apologizing for. Certainly not the whole world, being what it was. He can’t really focus on Bucky’s return to the distance they kept on base. The cold wall felt so good, and he was already fighting off a drowsy haze. “I think I’m going into shock. I’m just trying to keep talking.”

“Well, why do you want to talk about _that,”_ Bucky spits out.

“Because I think you deserve someone so much better,” Steve says, his usual officer’s decorum long gone by now. “Someone who will treat you so much better.”

“It’s not really up to me,” Bucky reminds him, and before Steve can really put that together with government controlled breeding and his whole argument about consent, Bucky’s knife makes a hard cracking sound in the cement and Steve can hear it bite. Bucky grunts in surprise, sheaths his second knife, and takes the one stuck in the wall in both hands. He twists, his tail standing out behind him as he puts the fullest possible torque against the handle, and a baseball sized chunk of cement pops out of the wall.

“Home run,” Bucky says in a gasp.

“What is it? What do you see?”

“It’s a— I don’t know. Another wall or a door? It’s—” there’s a pause as Bucky’s hand scrabbles through the ragged hole. “It’s metal. And freezing!”

“Will you go back and get my coat for me if we’re through in the next few minutes? I really feel like that might have been premature.”

“No!” Bucky shouts. “You insisted! Deal with it, human.”

Steve laughs, easy real laughter instead of his delirious giggles, and he hears Bucky attack the wall with renewed abandon.

“Unload your gun,” Bucky says suddenly, after a frustrated growl.

“What? Why?”

“It’s heavier than my knife, and I can’t carry a loaded weapon,” he says, with some frustration before he remembers himself. “Please, sir.”

Even in the fog of his injury, Steve remembers the first infraction report he’d ever received for an SCF. “You’ve handled a loaded weapon before,” he says conversationally, as he slips the mag out of the M4 and frees the round from the chamber with a tug on the op handle. It’s a mechanical motion, his muscle memory making it easy even as he struggles through his pain.

“Just… just the one time, sir,” Bucky says, quickly losing all of his earlier sass.

“Hm, making that shot from over a thousand yards away. A moving target. Obscured sightlines. Something tells me that wasn’t your first time handling a sniper rifle.”

Steve hands over the unloaded weapon and Bucky takes it to the wall. “Well, sir,” Bucky says carefully. “Lucky for you it was my last. Or I never would have been assigned to be your hunter.”

“Don’t believe in luck too much, Buck,” Steve cautions. He doesn’t know if Bucky ever found out he was the one who assigned Bucky hunter to detail in the first place, even when the service called for his dishonorable discharge for breaking regs and picking up the rifle when the sniper he was spotting for was killed. Bucky had saved the lives of three soldiers that day by breaking regulations even while he knew it would get him in trouble. Nothing dishonorable about that.

He had also saved the lives of two cats that day, Steve suddenly remembers. Dum Dum and Morita, he amends, now that he knows their names.

Chips and dust go flying as Bucky attacks the wall and at one point Steve hears a great clang from where the stock hits the metal plate. “Careful, could be RNS on the other side of that thing,” Steve says.

“Then I’ll ask them for help in Russian,” Bucky snorts. “And kill them when they come through the door.”

“Damn,” Steve says. “And they call _me_ the Star Spangled Man With the Plan.”

“Which is pretty ridiculous,” Bucky counters. “You don't ever seem to have a plan.” Steve makes a face, then laughs at Bucky’s grumpy teasing.

Steve really is lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops! It's 11 chapters again! I found the divide where I had intended to break chapter 9 it into separate chapters. I figured it out when this chapter wound up three times longer than all the others, ha ha!


	10. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Easy peezy glossary:
> 
> SERE Training: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" (military training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct)  
> NVG: Night Vision Goggles  
> BDU: Battle Dress Uniform (standard issue military filed uniforms)  
> PT: Physical Training  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

“Okay,” Bucky says, and the racket suddenly ceases. He’s breathing hard and Steve hears him stomp over, slide down to the floor next to him. “I might need a break,” he pants.

“That’s my queue then,” Steve says and he sucks in a huge breath.

“Wait, Captain— ” Bucky sputters, as Steve gets his feet under him and practically has to climb the damp wall in order to stand. It’s wet, but not slimy, the cement feeling more like a sheet of icy sandpaper under his stiff fingers. His leg flares in a fresh wave of pain and buckles, sending him crashing back down. His elbow skids along the wall, scraping him through the thin layer of his underarmor shirt before he twists painfully away and his ass makes an ungraceful crash landing.

“Shit, fuck, oh, fuck!” Steve gasps and kicks his feet as he resettles himself on the floor. “Oh man, terrible idea.”

“Another one of your great plans, sir,” Bucky says, entirely unironically as he hovers and pats Steve’s shoulder. He’s so close that Steve can feel the heat radiating off of the cat, and he finally starts to feel a bit chilled. When his SCF is finally satisfied Steve hasn’t reopened his wound or hurt himself any further, Bucky moves away, leaving the cool air in his place. Steve hears Bucky’s chest expand with a sigh, and imagines him bowing his back in the darkness as he stretches on all fours. “I was going to say you shouldn’t tire yourself out hacking at the wall. I just need a little rest.”

“How big did you get it?” Steve says, sweeping his gaze up the wall to his right, where Bucky had been working, even though all he sees is more blackness. He jumps when Bucky’s hand touches the top of his own, and then realizes the cat was guiding his rifle back into his hand. 

“About a foot wide, maybe a little bit more than a foot tall,” Bucky explains, while Steve sets his weapon down without reloading it. “The patch is newer than the rest of the walls but still really fucking solid. Sir.” Bucky’s mouth clicks shut. “Sorry…” 

“I think we’re a little bit past formality for now,” Steve says, and wonders if Bucky can see him shrug. Feline night vision is a phenomenal tactical tool but he has never been entirely sure just how much detail they could make out, especially in such complete darkness. “We might as well get used to it, if we’re going to die together.”

Bucky chuckles at the return of their dark humor and the dust on the floor grinds beneath him as he adjusts next to Steve. He gives in to a full, open mouthed yawn and Steve can hear a tiny sound within it, like a squeak, and he holds back a smile just in case Bucky was watching him. “I didn’t sleep,” Bucky explains, from where he had curled up on the floor next to Steve. “Not for real. Just sort of… tired out right now. I’ll be back up in twenty.”

The tip of Bucky’s tail brushes along the length of Steve’s arm when the cat wraps it around himself, and Steve shivers wishing he could touch it. Instead, he relaxes back against the wall, trying not to feel the throbbing pain in his leg. It takes only a few moments for Bucky’s breathing to drop off. Steve envies the catnaps that the SCFs can take at a moment’s notice, and closes his own eyes. Should he try to fall asleep too? He doesn’t think it’s a very good idea while he’s still fighting the effects of combat shock.

Steve gropes forward in the dark until his fingers touch the top of Bucky’s head, and strokes back his hair to pet his ears again, like he did when he first woke up. Something about the tender contact makes the tension in his shoulders give way. He incrementally allows himself to relax at the small feeling of stability and comfort that comes with the touch, less like a delirious exhaustion he knows has been creeping up on him, so he breathes deeply and does it again. Bucky’s head comes up suddenly, and Steve’s breath catches. It’s so inappropriate for him to be touching a fellow soldier like this, and he isn’t even sure how he started doing it, and certainly can’t explain himself if Bucky asked. 

If Steve had woken up with Colonel Danvers petting his head, he’d probably scream. 

Instead, Bucky turns his face up into Steve’s hand, licks his palm, and then ducks his head back down. Bucky must not be entirely awake, and didn’t realize what he just did, and Steve tells himself it’s a clear sign he should just keep his hands to himself. The tiny stripe of cold where Bucky had licked his palm feels like permission though, so Steve gingerly lowers his hand again to touch one fluffy soft ear. He strokes it gently, along the grain of the fur, and closes his eyes one more time, just to rest them for a minute.

* * *

Bucky awakes with a start exactly twenty minutes later. When he raises his head he feels something slither away over one of his ears, and nearly shouts in terror until he realizes it’s just Captain Rogers’ hand. Bucky compulsively wants to lick it, or at least smell his palm, but he gently takes hold of it and lowers it to the captain’s lap.

Rogers looks pretty damn awful. Even in the low light Bucky can tell he’s not the right color, and his face is strained with pain even in his sleep. Bashing at the hole in the wall will definitely wake him up again, but getting the job done so that Bucky could get him to a real human doctor is probably better than the nap.

Bucky picks up the white rifle from where it was leaning against the wall, then changes his mind and puts a hand on Rogers’ shoulder to give him a gentle shake. “Hey, you awake, captain?”

Rogers groans, and bites his lower lip as he comes awake. “Nope,” he argues, after releasing a long, suffering exhale. “Not at all.”

“I’m going to get started again. Do you need anything?”

“Thirsty.” Rogers replies and Bucky wishes he hadn’t asked. It’s not like he has anything on him that Rogers might be able to use, unless the captain has a dire need to cut things with unique and extremely sharp edged weapons.

“Me too,” Bucky sighs. “We’ll be licking the walls soon.” 

He goes back to bashing the stock of the captain’s weapon into the crumbling cement. It takes him nearly an hour to create a big enough hole for a person to barely squeeze through, but all he sees is more goddamn metal. So far there are no hinges or handles or any indication that the plate he’s looking at had ever been a fucking door. What’s worse, the captain’s good mood seems to have fizzled out in his exhaustion and pain, leaving Bucky to work almost entirely in silence. It was boring work.

“We might have to light another one of your sticks so you can come take a look at this,” Bucky says, finally breaking the silence. He plants one fists on his hip in frustration, and taps the stock of the M4 directly to the metal, as if the dull clang it made could somehow tell him its secrets. “It has to be a door, but it’s not like one I’ve ever seen. Maybe it’s a civilian thing that you… might...” he trails off when he realizes Captain Rogers isn’t responding. “Captain?”

There’s swooping sensation in Bucky’s gut and he nearly drops the rifle in alarm. He quickly goes to his knees in front of the human and presses two fingers against the vein in his throat to feel for a pulse. It flutters, stressed and rapid for a human, but strong. Rogers is cold to the touch, clammy with sweat, and his eyes are screwed shut, suffering even in unconsciousness. Not fair.

Bucky presses his hand against the slick wall at the captain’s back, finds it freezing to the touch, cold and slick directly against Rogers’ back. The wall must have given him some relief from the feverish heat of his injury, but the frigid dampness leached the heat from his body until there was nothing left to keep him awake. Bucky took in the shallow breath and blue lips and has to crush a ball of fear that welled up inside him; he had failed in his duty, he was losing his human because he hadn’t been paying him any attention. 

Bucky sinks his fangs into his bottom lip to snap himself out of it. Rogers is still alive, now is not the time to panic.

“Oh, what do I do?” Bucky worries, and paces back and forth. “Ah!” He nearly shouts, before he takes off at a sprint back the way they came. He skids to a stop when he finds Rogers’ coat, tosses it over his shoulder, and sprints back on all fours. He sits on his knees and drapes the coat over the captain’s chest, like a blanket, and rubs his broad shoulders, trying to jumpstart his circulation. When that doesn’t work, he worries again. 

“What do I do, what do I do,” Bucky whimpers. “He’s so cold… How can he be so cold when it’s so fucking hot in here?” That isn’t the only thing about the captain’s condition that doesn't make any sense. The wound had bled a lot initially, but with the field dressing should have stabilized it by now. What’s more, the raging fever followed by a sudden drop in body temperature must be caused by something more than just the stuffy air and his injury.

Bucky pauses when he realizes what he should do. He re-drapes the jacket over Rogers’ shoulders, so it keeps an insulated barrier between the chilled human and the wall.

“Sorry about this, sir,” he says softly, thinking about how weird this will be when the captain wakes up, and tucks himself carefully into Rogers’ lap. He curls himself up as tightly as possible, then pulls the jacket closed over them both. The captain’s frigid body temperature is enough to sap some of the heat out of Bucky’s body, even through his underarmor, but pretty soon the pocket of heat between the jacket and the captain’s belly starts to cook from Bucky’s warmth. He’s so close to the Captain’s crotch that he can scent his sex, and suddenly his heat awakens causing his own body responds with interest. 

Humans and cats have sex—Bucky knows that much about the world outside of the military at least—but it was mostly between kept companions. And, Bucky thinks, mostly with female companions kept by human males, and generally isn’t talked about. When Bucky was thirteen, still in military academy with the other kits in training, he remembers the first kit he ever knew who “washed out” of the SCF program. Bucky couldn’t remember the kit’s name, but he had been small, runtish, even for a feline, and for some reason seemed to be the favorite of their Russian teacher. Once the scent of the much older human started to cling to him, Bucky and all the others kept their distance. Even now Bucky isn't quite sure why, when it was clearly the human that had instigated it. The kit didn’t last long after that, and eventually the Russian teacher told them he’d been expelled for under-performing. They all knew the real reason, even if no one talked about it. It’s just something that happens.

Bucky frowns at the memory of how clear that message had been. Just because it happens doesn’t mean Bucky has any business having those thoughts about  _ Captain Rogers. _

Still, in the absence of his mate Captain Rogers feels very, very nice to touch. Suddenly his heat flares, the full force of it suddenly burning through his body and his self control. A sharp pull in his gut that makes Bucky squirm. Luckily Rogers is half dead, or Bucky would have been in real trouble. 

The thought makes him feel sick with worry, and tempers his rising arousal. “Please don’t die,” he whispers. “You’re the best human I’ve ever met.” 

“Not gonna die,” Captain Rogers mumbles, and Bucky catches his breath. “Just really, really tired.” 

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Bucky says, chest filling with renewed determination. He lifts his head from the Captain’s lap, and sees that his eyes are still closed, and fresh sweat had sprung up on his forehead. “Are you warm enough?” 

“So warm,” Steve says dreamily. “You’re so warm.”

“Yeah, captain, I know. I’m in heat,” he stupidly admits, but Rogers is drifting and Bucky figures it doesn’t matter now anyway. 

Bucky sighs heavily through his nose and a strong scent catches his attention. He had been distracted before, inappropriately aroused and worrying a bit too much about his own body, but now he can focus on the thread of unfamiliar scent and his hackles shoot straight up. He leans further across Rogers’ lap, following it, and presses his face close to the wound on his thigh. “What is this?” Bucky whispers, as a chill unzips a sensitive nerve along his spine and he shivers.

“Mnnf,” Rogers mumbles, and Bucky startles when he feels the human’s hand stroke his ear. It’s awkward, being touched so intimately by a human, but not unpleasant. Either way, it keeps Rogers distracted, so Bucky pushes his head more squarely into the captain’s hand, then leans across his lap to get closer to the bandage. It’s a mess, torn and dirty from the captain’s crawl through the pipe, but still holding. Bucky can scent the antiseptic in the quikclot, the cotton and the plastic used in the field dressing, and the vague tang of the antibiotics Rogers must have used when he first woke up.

Underneath all of that is something putrid, and once Bucky’s nose catches a hold of it he has no idea how he missed it for so long.

“Oh no,” he whispers, and opens his mouth to take a full breath of the scent, to taste the air and know for sure that it was the same as earlier, when he had part of Arnim Zola in his mouth. Rogers groans when Bucky gently nudges the edges of the bandage, and his hand drops off into his lap. “Ah, Captain,” Bucky chides him gently. “It’s okay. Pet the kitty,” he picks up Rogers’s hand quickly and puts it back on his own head. Thankfully the human obliges, and he gently rubs Bucky’s left ear between his thumb and forefinger. 

“So soft,” Rogers mutters and Bucky rolls his eyes. If Rogers doesn’t remember this, he would die before he told him what happened here. If they ever get out of this hole, of course. 

Bucky gently peels away the edge of the bandage most heavily leaden with the scent and he can tell right away that he’s smelling venom. It was something Zola hit Rogers with when he lashed out with that barb. There is a slight purple color around the edges of one of the ragged scrapes, and Bucky breathes softly on it, honing in on the exact source of the corruption, even though he’s not sure what he can do about it. 

If it was Bucky’s own wound, he’d lick it clean. Cats have antiseptic bacteria in their mouths, but humans don’t, and their own physiology might not respond to it. Still, Bucky had been trained to try, in the event that a human charge was so severely wounded, even if it meant he’d be poisoning himself in the process. He is momentarily distracted and closes his eyes when Rogers’ fingers find a sweet spot at the back of his ear, where it meets his scalp. He has to swallow the urge to purr when he dips his head back down to the wound.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt,” he quietly begs, and pushes his tongue against the Captain’s thigh, then winces immediately at the taste. The venom stands out, salt and vinegar on top of something a little bit sweet and perfumy. Bucky licks as gently as he can, even as Rogers squirms a little, and makes a fist in Bucky’s hair. Bucky keeps his tongue flat, pushing out against the wound and bringing his tongue off the skin when he retracts it, to ensure the barbs don’t catch on the badly damaged flesh. Rogers will carry an ugly scar here, probably for the rest of his life.

Still, Bucky can tell it works as the burning, oily taste of it turns to grit inside his mouth, like starch. He does this for so long his jaw begins to ache, and his mouth goes dry as it fills with the taste of the neutralized venom. Rogers eventually relaxes beneath him, and at one point moans softly through his nose, like he was waking up slowly from a hard night’s sleep.

“What,” he says, groggy, disoriented, and Bucky finally pulls away just enough to replace the bandage. “What are you doing?”

“What are  _ you  _ doing?” Bucky shoots back and Steve pulls his hand away from where it was tangled in Bucky’s hair.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Steve blurts out, coming awake suddenly as he pulls his hand away. “I don’t know why— I’ve never— I wouldn’t— ”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says, giving him a break. He can’t help himself from smiling at his triumph. Rogers already sounds better, all flustered and embarrassed like always. “I think you were having fever dreams. Don’t worry about it. I was just checking your wound for infection, but it seems like it’s doing okay for now.” 

Bucky extracts himself from the captain’s lap, picks up the gun, and stares hard at the progress he’s made at the cement. He can still sense Rogers’ confusion behind him, can hear him level out his breathing and mumble something self deprecating. There’s a sudden swell of fondness there for his human, quickly followed by the real sense of responsibility he has to get him out of here. Not just because it was his sworn duty.

Bucky sighs and runs his hands over the ragged, sharp edges of the cement were he’s made the most progress. He needs a new strategy to attack this problem and bashing the rifle against the cement wasn’t the answer.

He looks back at Rogers who had leaned his head back against the wall with a thunk and stares into the nothingness around him. It must be hard, being so blind in the dark. Bucky looks back at the hole he’s made, and pauses disappointed with himself that he’s not doing much better. There is a pocket between the cement and the metal plate, maybe three inches of open air, which explains why this section of the wall isn't slick with moisture. He had been wedging the stock of the M4 in there when he’d chipped away enough at the outer layer of the cement to try and break a larger chunk off, but it had been slow work. It wasn’t large enough for him to get any real leverage against the metal plate. Bucky takes another look at Rogers, at all his military equipment and weapons, then back at the gap.

It is, however, just large enough for a grenade to get slipped inside. 

Bucky turns and looks towards the giant pit in the center of the cavern, doing the math in his head. The metal door would act as a blast shield, and the explosion would be directed inward, over the pit. He’d still need to get Rogers far, far away from the radius, but moving the captain would be easier than spending several more hours chipping away at the damn wall. 

“I think I have a plan,” Bucky says. “But you’re not going to like it.”

* * *

“I don’t like this plan,” Rogers predictably states, but Bucky wasn’t hearing a ‘no’ so he soldiers on amidst his vague and unconvincing protests.

By the time he’s relocated the Captain all the way to the end of the walkway, where it turns back towards the pipe they crawled through, Bucky is heaving from thirst and exhaustion. If the grenade winds up blowing them all to hell it would be just as well. He’s ready to be done with this fucking hole.

Rogers is sweating and gasping as well, but the deathlike chill that had settled on him earlier seems to be reduced to a more manageable state of general weariness and pain. Poor guy.

“Better than dying of asphyxiation,” Bucky says, after finally taking the grenade from Rogers. Bucky grins, even though he knows the captain can’t see him.

“Wait,” Rogers clamps onto Bucky’s wrist apparently no longer playing along with their macabre game. His eyes aren’t quite focused on anything, unseeing as they are in the dark, but he’s clearly trying to look Bucky in the face. “You sure you’ve got it? Pull the pin and it detonates in four seconds. Four.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky says softly. “I’ve got it. I promise.” 

“I know you’ve never trained with these, but you really can’t mess around.  _ Four seconds.” _

“Yes, sir.” Bucky answers again. Rogers releases his wrist, finally satisfied by Bucky’s answer or just unable to keep arguing. Bucky lopes back to the hole he’s made in the false wall, grenade held tightly enough in his grip to make his hand ache. Rogers is right—he’s never actually used a grenade before, had never even held one in his hands. He’d probably be discharged from the military immediately if he got caught with one, unlike the situation with the sniper rifle. Of course it’d be impossible for Rogers to pull the pin and escape the blast radius in four seconds, hobbled like he is with that injury. In the darkness of that drainage chamber, they silently agreed to break one of the stricter regulations the army has about cats and weapons and now Bucky is holding a live grenade in his sweating fist. It’s an odd feeling, freedom and terror and a sense of breaking too many rules at once.

Bucky tosses his head and flicks his tail to shake off the feeling. No time for that now.

Bucky takes in a few measured breaths, pulls the pin, and drops the grenade into the space between the wall and the door. He sprints back to Rogers on all fours, skids to a halt just in front of him, and covers the Captain’s entire body with his own. The blast is like a punch to the chest, pops his ears and a hot woof of air screams around them. Bucky grits his teeth as the world shakes, and the captain makes a tense ball of muscle beneath him. 

The explosion sends a shower of rubble and dust straight into the pit, and patches of the ceiling come off in great wide sheets of crumbling cement. Bucky coughs and sits up, feels dust and shards of it slip off his back.

“Are you okay, sir?” Bucky asks and Rogers nods, but still doesn’t open his eyes. His face is still screwed up in pain, and he clutches his leg, not from a fresh pain but now just out of habit. “I’ll go check to see how far we got.” 

Bucky sprints back to the opening, the patch of cement completely cleared from the metal door. The bolts of it are finally revealed, one giant screw with a matching nut in each corner.

“It’s definitely a doorway!” Bucky calls back to the captain. 

“Yay, Russians,” the Captain weakly calls back.

Bucky grins and finally dares to pull out the CO2 laser. “Okay, you big metal fuck,” he whispers, switching on the high tech device and blinking in the harsh pinpoint of light. He stands on his tiptoes, counterbalanced with his tail, to reach the top of the metal plate, and shears off the left and right screws without an issue. By the time he gets to the bottom bolt the laser finally winks out, and suddenly the most high tech set of cutters in the US Army becomes a useless hunk of plastic. Bucky slips it back into his BDU pocket, and attacks the partially sliced bolt with his favorite knife. It had worked well enough on the metal grate that lead them through the hell pipe into this chamber, so he figures it’s worth a shot.

In the meantime, he hears Rogers halfway dragging himself from the end of the room back to the doorway, slipping along with one hand braced against the wet wall. He must be feeling better, if he’s walking on his own. “Wait for me to come get you, Captain,” Bucky grumbles back at him. “You’re just going to exhaust yourself.”

“I’m already exhausted, Buck,” Rogers argues breathlessly. He’s lit the second glow stick to make his way over, and the green glow casts a gentle light throughout the chamber. “But if there’s anything I can do to help, now’s the time before I become completely useless. Sorry,” he adds with a grunt. “Just stubborn.”

“You’re not sorry, sir.”

Rogers laughs. He definitely must be feeling somewhat better, and Bucky’s whole body warms from relief. Also from his nagging heat, but he’s choosing to ignore that for now. Maybe Rogers is just excited to get the fuck out of—  

“Bucky move!” Steve screams, and Bucky barely throws himself back before the huge slab of metal clangs into the cavern with a great, destructive crash. Bucky catches his breath, holding his tail in both fists after snatching it out of the way, and looks down at where the edges of the metal bit into the solid stone walkway where he was just standing. The metal slab must have been top heavy, and the bolts holding it in place at the bottom of the opening had ripped free from the cement wall just from the weight of it pulling away. Bucky looks back at Captain Rogers, who was on his knees after staggering forward towards Bucky. 

“That was close,” Bucky says in shocked relief as cold air billows into the chamber from the opening, tugging at his hair and cooling his skin. It was tangy, the scent of fish, oil, dried kelp and salted, rotting wood coming in with the fresh air. Bucky never thought Sakhalin smelled so sweet.

Rogers shakes his head and blows out a steadying breath. “Oh, thank God,” he says, and picks up his glowstick before it can roll further away. “Whose stubborn now.”

Rogers is teasing, but his voice is shaking. That had really scared him. “We’re not done just yet,” Bucky says, trying not to sound grim as he looks from Captain Rogers’ severely injured leg to the steeply spiraling staircase beyond the fresh, crumbling hole in the wall. “I might have to scout ahead, just a little ways.”

Rogers shakes his head and hauls himself back up, like he’s ready to get going. His face shines with sweat and his hair is soaked through, sticky and matted with cement dust from the ceiling. The glow stick casts a sickly pall under his chin as he struggles forward, and Bucky feels like he’s betraying his captain when he speaks. “It’ll be faster if I go up alone. I can get help, check for hostiles, make sure it’s safe first.”

“I’m not letting you risk going alone,” Rogers argues, his back straightening up. It’s not just pride that drives the captain to skirt around protocol that Bucky takes the lead, to insist on being his backup like Bucky was the one whose life was valuable to the United States Army. “I’ll be able to offer you covering fire if we meet resistance in there. It’ll be slow going but safer.”  Rogers finally makes it to the edge of the doorway and slings his rifle back around, clicking the magazine of ammunition back into place, and loading a round into the chamber. He scowls, determined. Bucky’s heart thuds, but he tells it to shut the hell up.

“Captain you can barely stay conscious,” Bucky says, and has to leap to Rogers’ side when he teeters dangerously, suddenly forced to use his rifle as a cane, just to stay standing. Rogers nearly collapses into Bucky’s arms with an  _ oof! _ One arm slings around Bucky’s shoulders and the other drops low when he lost his grip on his weapon. “Easy there,” Bucky says gently, taking hold of the huge human by his forearms as Rogers bites down on a yelp of pain. He sucks in the frigid air through his teeth, clenching hard against the agony that should be crippling him. 

Bucky shifts, puts his arm around Rogers’ waist to get a better grip on his bulky frame. “Captain, that’s—” he stops talking when Rogers looks up, and they both lock gazes. Their noses are a hair’s breadth apart, so close that Bucky can feel the heat radiating from Rogers’ glazed cheeks. “I…” he starts again, but it’s hard to speak so all he does is swallow. He can feel a tingle in the scruff of his neck, pins and needles between his legs and all the way down his tail. 

“Maybe you’re right,” Rogers says suddenly, breaking his gaze. Bucky feels the puff of his sigh against his cheek.

_ Cat scratch fever,  _ Brock had said, and Bucky thinks about his tongue dragging across the captain’s thigh, cleaning a wound he knew would have otherwise killed him. Cat scratch fever isn't a real thing. It was just a gross term for humans who lust after felines, as if cats ever have a choice in a matter when their human keepers drag them into their beds. Bucky clears his throat and lowers Captain Rogers back down to the dusty floor. He groans all the way down. Bucky feels the cold air fill in the gap between them as they separate and thinks maybe there’s some truth to the fever part. With his heat it’s almost impossible to tell how much of the inferno under his skin is caused by his hormones and how much is due to the room being on actual fire.

Bucky releases a helpless breath and swipes sweat from across his brow again, careful not to upset the gauze holding his bandage in place. “I’ll run up the stairs, but I’ll stay in audible distance. Tap the glow stick against the wall,” he stops to indicate the edge of the doorway. “I’ll hear it for a long distance. I’ll come back either if I find anything or if I can’t hear the tapping anymore. Or if you can’t- well, if the tapping stops.” 

Rogers nods, not meeting Bucky’s eyes. His face is red, but it has been since Bucky woke up, flushed with pain and probably no small amount of physical shock. It’s still strange seeing him look out from under the fringe of his long lashes, uncharacteristically…

_ Shy, _ Bucky thinks with a hard swallow and his ear flicks at the reminder of the captain’s gentle fingers.

“Understood,” he says, his voice just as strong as ever even as it comes out aimed at Bucky’s chest. Bucky's heart thumps obnoxiously again, as if it wants to answer itself, without his permission. “But I’ll use my knife to maintain communication with you. You take the light.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I can see okay,” he says, and peers up the stairwell. It’s wide for a passage so deep underground, flat cement on all sides, a perfectly constructed shaft. It must have been made in the fifties, before Russia capitulated to the US. The steps were unusually tall, like it was made for something with slightly longer legs than humans, and they vanish into the inky darkness just a few feet beyond Bucky’s field of view. “Besides,” Bucky says, unable to pull his gaze away from the sucking darkness. “I want to be able to sneak up on whomever is up there.” 

Another gust of cold air tumbles down the shaft and Bucky shivers, before he creeps into the opening. “I swear I’m coming back, Captain.”

Rogers makes a face, like he's confused as to why Bucky feels the need to make such a vehement promise. “I trust you, Buck.” He taps on the wall with the hilt of his own combat knife, demonstrating his signal and smiles. Bucky isn’t sure when the captain started calling him that but he likes it, and he hopes he doesn’t stop once they are finally out of there.

Bucky swallows and leaps into the darkness, taking the stairs on all fours, silent as the shadows around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lag in posting this chapter! Things got a bit busy over the holidays. 
> 
> There's only one chapter left in Part One of Something Wild Calls You Home, so I hope you'll join me for the finale! 
> 
> There is a full fic planned after this one, so please subscribe to the series if you're excited to read more about cat Bucky, Captain Rogers, and whatever the hell Arnim Zola is ;)


	11. Army of One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated glossary: 
> 
> UHS: "Ultimate Heat Sink" The totally ridiculous name of the backup water supply for a nuclear reactor.   
> SERE Training: "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape" (military training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct)  
> NVG: Night Vision Goggles  
> BDU: Battle Dress Uniform (standard issue military filed uniforms)  
> PT: Physical Training  
> SCF: Soldier Companion Feline  
> CO: Commanding Officer  
> HVT: High Value Target  
> IED: Improvised Explosive Device (commonly used by soviet insurgents on Sakhalin)  
> CFC: Center for Feline Control  
> OCS: Officer Candidate School  
> RNS: Russkiye Narodinye Sili (Russian Motherland Forces) the Soviet insurgent forces that work against the United States/Japanese occupation of Russia.  
> op: short for operation

Steve has to remember to tap the knife against the wall, after the doorway swallows Bucky whole and he finally starts to breathe again. It amazed him how quickly utter silence descends upon the cavernous room, to the point where even the green glow of his little light seems to shrink away from the oppressive stillness. He can hear the grit from the wall scraping against the hard metal pommel of his knife as he  _ tap tap taps _ it against the cement beside him.

After a few moments Steve shakes the glow stick, urging more light from the swirl of chemicals within, and taps once more,  _ tap tap tap _ , to continue the signal. He knows it’s impossible, but he wishes Bucky could send a signal in reply, a  _ marco  _ to his  _ polo _ . 

Steve’s not sure how much time passes, and shivers so hard he has a hard time pulling his coat closed, his hands shaking as he drags up the thick zipper and pats down the velcro flap that hides it under an added layer of urban digital camo. How had he been so hot earlier, when he had emerged from that fucking pipe? It wasn’t just the cold air coming in from the door, making him feel like the surface was tantalizingly close. Something had burned out inside him, something Bucky had only momentarily rekindled when he napped so close to him earlier, but now he was starting to feel Sakhalin’s winter in his bones. Steve feels his cheeks heat at the memory of getting caught petting his ears— _ what the hell was he thinking!?— _ and he resumes his duty. 

_ Tap tap tap _ , and he starts to fantasize about water. He isn’t too far off from ‘licking the walls,’ as Bucky so ominously joked, and found himself dragging his dry tongue over chapped lips as he cast his gaze up the moisture slicked wall beside him. It wouldn’t do him any good, it was probably loaded with sea salt. 

His leg is fucking  _ killing  _ him. Steve huffs out a quiet, humorless laugh when it occurs to him that was probably literally the case. The ache of constant cold makes him feel sleepy, and he re-adjusts his hips so that his butt doesn’t go entirely numb against the solid cement floor. 

_ Tap tap tap,  _ and Steve hopes Bucky is either close to the surface or close to turning around by now. 

_ Tap tap tap,  _ Steve feels like hours have gone by, and his leg hurts so bad all he can feel is a line of ice down his left side. Where is Bucky? Surely he’s out of earshot by now? 

_ Tap tap—  _ The knife drops out of his hand, and Steve startles awake. Had he fallen asleep? Did he drop the knife or…? What did he…? Where was the light? Steve digs the glow stick out from between his thighs and shakes it as hard as he can. It’s so dim it glows like a tiny ember, casting almost no light at all around him.

_ Tap tap tap,  _ that was a close one.

_ Tap tap tap, _ and Steve shivers. Surely, Bucky would be back any moment now. He’d help Steve up, put his thick muscled arms around Steve’s waist. 

_ Tap tap tap,  _ Steve would wrap his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, and their bodies would press firmly against each other. Bucky’s fiery heat would help with the damn, aching cold. Steve would…

_ Tap tap... tap. _

Steve would…

* * *

Steve can hear the tapping, his knife pommel digging and grinding and clattering against the frigid slab of cement that made up his tomb. His whole body felt thin and fuzzy like he was some kind of badly shedding dishrag. On top of the pain in his leg his entire face felt like it was on fire. A slow burn kind of pain that he knew would persist even after he opened his eyes.

Of course, that means he’s not actually dead. It also means he’s not the one tapping the knife. As soon as that occurs to him, he sits bolt upright, and cries out when the shock of bright daylight floods into his stinging eyes. He collapses back into a haze of physical misery, fogged over by painkillers struggling to keep up.

“Captain Rogers,” someone says to him, and he groans before he even thinks to answer. “Captain Rogers can you hear me?” 

“Yes, and I’m fine where’s Bucky?” He somehow manages to say, even though his mouth feels stuffed with dry cotton. He tries to work saliva into his mouth and realizes it’s just his tongue. “Am I still in Russia? What happened in the elevator?” He doesn’t think he’s making much sense, but doesn’t care. He pulls his hands away from his stinging face to crack open one gummy eye.

He is in the medical ward, back at camp. The tapping sound is something coming from outside, a Humvee getting loaded up with supplies, maybe. 

“Oh,” he gasps, and drops his head back down into a stack of thin pillows. “Oh, shit.”

“You suffered severe injuries, Captain Rogers,” the woman continues. Colonel Carol Danvers, Steve corrects in his mind, as his training sluggishly returns. “A concussion, lacerations, blood loss, shock and the start of a pretty severe infection. Whatever you found down in that hole, it almost managed to kill you.” 

“How long?” Steve asks. “Ma’am,” he amends, remembering his manners at last. 

Colonel Danvers nods. She’s wearing her dress uniform, and the medals racked across her chest glint in the dim overhead light. Her bright yellow hair is twisted up into a smart knot on the back of her head, leaving a few waves free to frame her face. He knew better than to think the informal hairstyle made her any less severe, and she nodded curtly as if she welcomed him back to business already. “We lost contact with your team right after Captain Ward reported that the high value target was in custody. It took two hours but we managed to extract Ward and Zola from the rubble.”

Steve’s brain flickers at that detail, like it has to shut out a sudden fear that makes his heart stutter in his chest, and he coughs suddenly as if he was still trying to expel the cement dust from the explosion. When all the noise in his chest quiets down, Steve’s not entirely sure what information he’s even trying to comprehend from the impromptu debrief. He thinks of Bucky, of being wounded in that sanctuary together, of touching a velvety soft ear, of forcing his massive shoulders through that terrible pipe. 

His memory still refuses to cough up any meaningful details. 

“We can’t say for certain how long you were trapped in the old reserve coolant cistern, but your cat managed to get help from a local clean up crew about twenty hours after the warehouse explosion. The doctor tells me you’ve been unconscious for about twelve hours, but you shouldn’t experience any permanent damage…” The Colonel trails off and Steve realizes she looks somewhat uncomfortable, like she’s in a hurry but forced to sit still. 

Reserve coolant cistern? So that’s where they had been trapped. An underground chamber designed to hold ocean water to cool a nuclear reactor. Steve is distracted at the thought, trying to recall Sakhalin’s history, if the Soviets ever had an active nuclear plant, but his mind slams to a halt when he remembers the massive server room they found.

“Dr. Zola,” Steve starts, realizing she probably wants to ask him about what happened. Brock and Captain Ward taking him up in the elevator before…  _ Before… _ More details struggle to the surface, and he blinks hard as pain splits his skull in half. “Dr. Zola knew we were coming for him. The explosion was a trap, but his  _ face—” _

The Colonel puts up a single hand and shakes her head. “We’ll go over the details in a full debrief later, don’t worry about any of that now.”

Steve frowns. He’s lying on his side, a position he realizes he was put in to keep pressure off his wounded leg. There had been something weird about Zola that he wanted desperately to remember. Should that matter to him so much now? If Danvers wasn’t after a full debrief then what was she trying to ask him? “May I ask what this is about, ma’am?”

Colonel Danvers clears her throat. “I want to apologize. You had reported in that the cats were skittish about something. I’ll admit there was some external pressure put on me to capture Zola, and if he had slipped through our fingers—well, it’s no excuse. I should have listened to you.”

“Captain Ward should have listened to me,” Steve darkly replies, remembering everything before they headed down the elevator with crystal clarity. His voice is ragged in his own ears, but his mood makes it even harder to speak without glaring. “I was actually going to execute field discretion and abort. Captain Ward insisted on taking that elevator, ma’am.”

Colonel Danvers chuckles. “Not every day a captain admits he was going to disobey a direct order from a colonel.”

“I had an actionable defense,” Steve says, and tries to smile but he coughs instead. His lungs feel gritty, and he shivers as more memories of the hole come back to him. Colonel Danvers stands up and away from him, and seems to produce a water bottle out of thin air. It’s so cold, and Steve drinks so much that he feels his belly start to ache from it.

“Thank you,” he manages, and coughs again.

Colonel Danvers nods again, and her face arranges back into the stern distance of a commanding officer. “Take all the time you need to recover. Now that we have Zola, we can work out the details of your debrief later.”

“What about Bucky?”

“Your SCF? He was injured but I’m sure he’ll be fine. He was sent back to New York for surgery. RNS was waiting for him when he got to the surface and he took some damage, but should be back in fighting shape soon.”

“Why did he get sent back to New York?” Steve says looking around the medical bay. Aside from a medical officer sorting through supplies in the back of the ward, he was the only other person there. Steve suddenly remembers Bucky is a cat. They have their own medical facility, next to their showers.

Danvers knits her eyebrows as she thinks it over. “I’m not sure about the details, but it had something to do with his fever. We don’t have a full lab here to do the blood work, and Ward’s SCF reported that Bucky got scratched up by some Russian cat. We couldn’t take any chances of him having an infection.”

Steve swallows.  _ I’m in heat,  _ Bucky had said about his radiating body temperature. Steve had been half delirious with pain at the time, but the memory slams into him and twists his stomach into a guilty knot. Bucky had been in  _ heat. _ Steve shakes his head, disappointed by his own stupidity.

“Consider yourself lucky, Captain Rogers,” Colonel Danvers says with a smile, stepping away from the bed. Apparently, with her apology made she was done with him. “We reported you as killed in action. It’s not every day a soldier gets to return from the dead.”

* * *

Steve’s full debrief of Operation Lemurian Star is miserably long and simultaneously completely ineffective. He is sent to Germany to sit around a table of men and women in slick, perfectly pressed dress uniforms who had probably never set foot on Sakhalin while they went through the details of his own damn operation.

On a whole it had been a success. The docks had been secured with minimal casualties; only two sent home in boxes, both from the Strike expeditionary force, and one SCF was buried outside the base. No one bothers telling Steve which one, and they exchange confused looks when he asks. Danvers pushes the debrief forward, giving him an hard look out of the corner of her eye. 

Captain Ward apparently won a combat commendation for extracting Arnim Zola, while Steve was recommended for a Purple Heart. Great. Just what he always wanted. He asks about any special recognition for Bucky, who saved his life, but the council just gives him some placating smiles and someone writes it down as a “nice suggestion.”

No one says anything about Brock, and somehow Steve feels this is critically missing intelligence. Ever since he woke up in the hospital he had felt like there was something terribly important about Brock and Arnim Zola. Apparently whatever that concern was got left behind in that fucking hole.

The debrief council seems supremely interested in Zola’s laptop. Steve doesn’t have any answers for them. 

Zola turns out to have been Swedish, though they don’t tell Steve much more about him, or where they sent him, or what the current status of the RNS is now that they captured its supposed leader.

Four weeks after Operation Lemurian Star, Steve finally sets foot on American soil. Only one foot of course, because the other still has skin grafts healing along the side, and he’s on crutches, but it’s still good to be home.

* * *

Steve checks the directories, but felines aren’t issued email addresses.

The personnel officers at Fort Drum are not much more help, since they only track human personnel. 

By now Steve remembers everything after they had been dropped down the hole. That’s still how he thinks about it, even after finding out the technical term was Ultimate Heat Sink.  _ The hole. _

He and Bucky had survived the hole together, and he remembers talking together, laughing together, in the face of near certain death. Steve remembers the sound of Bucky's distressed purring, remembers gently stroking the hair from his face and touching those delicate, springy ears. Steve remembers the tip of Bucky's tail tickling his arm, when he had curled up for a catnap, exhausted after working for hours to excavate the cement patch of wall. Steve remembers suddenly waking up, after drifting off with his fingers inappropriately tangled up in Bucky's hair. 

He'd give just about anything to touch those silky strands again, just to know Bucky is safe and alive. He’d tell Bucky… he’d tell him… he’s not sure what he’d tell him. Maybe he’d ask Bucky if he also finds himself breathing quickly when he steps into an elevator. He’d ask Bucky if he’s just as unsettled by the subway, because it reminds him of the fucking  _ pipe.  _

Finally, Steve makes headway with the quartermasters, since it turns out they are the ones that oversee the feline handlers. After some nonsense about tracking down F-5 Sergeant “Bucky” without his serial number (32557038 is now burned in Steve’s memory) they are able to tell him that they hadn’t been able to give updates to his condition because Bucky had been handed over to the Center of Feline Control for “undisclosed reasons.”

Steve throws a chair across his office when he’s told to “please hold” for the thousandth time. It crashes through the door into the hallway of the Ops and Command Station where he works when he’s Stateside. Steve tries to hide his face when a terrified looking private dutifully returns the chair and scurries away before he can properly apologize.

It has been nearly six months since Sakhalin. Since the hole. Since he had heard Bucky had been wounded trying to reach the surface, to get help for Steve. Six months since Bucky was shipped off for an unidentifiable fever when Steve knew he had just been in heat.

Eventually, Steve gets a CFC contact, and the administrator confirms Bucky (or SCF-h 32557038 F-5 as they call him) had been discharged back into the Army  _ weeks  _ beforehand. Steve reaches out with a new number they gave him for a sub-branch of the quartermasters, a little known office of feline operations of foreign deployment, and he learns Bucky never made it back to Sakhalin.

That’s when Steve gets new deployment orders. His leg is all healed up, albeit with a hideous scar that zig-zags in a ragged keloid from his hip down to his knee. His Howling Commandos are needed once again as RNS activity had spiked after a relatively calm summer following Zola’s capture.

When Steve gets there, no one has information about Bucky. It turns out Strike’s cat Rollins is the one that died in the op. His grave isn’t even marked, just outside of the camp’s Hesco perimeter.

Finally, Steve gives in and calls his dad. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s asked his father for anything, and he knows this one will cost him, just because of how vague he is about his own motivation for asking. He suffers through the guilt trip and the lecture, the invitations to DC that he knows he’ll have to make excuses for later, and nearly buckles when his father rails at him for wasting his talents as a bullet catcher infantryman when there are perfectly good positions open at the Pentagon that suits his “natural leadership skills.” When his father says “leadership” what he really means is “politician.” Steve pictures the way Bucky presses his fangs into his bottom lip when he’s feeling unsure of something and endures his father’s bullshit long enough to get what he’s after.

“Medical discharge,” the general tells him, and no there’s no record as to why or where. Once Steve has that information, he makes many late night sat phone calls between missions on the island that he basically sleepwalks through. 

Mainland Russia. New York. One office even directs him to a Greyhound station in California but that’s a dead end. 

Meanwhile, Russia’s provisional government is sworn in. Democratic elections are held. The Japanese start recalling their vessels from Russian waters. The JDS Kongō remains offshore near Sakhalin, just in case. Steve doesn't pay much more attention to the geopolitics than he has to in order to perform the basic functions of his job. 

Thanksgiving comes and goes. Christmas. New Years. The Howlies pull him into their usual base celebrations, but it’s all wrong. Steve winds up spending more time with the feline unit than with his human commandos. Morita is there. Dernier. Jonesy. They actually make pretty good company, and Dum Dum is assigned as his SCF-h. He tries not to talk too much about Bucky. It just feels like it’d be rude, expecting Dum Dum to live up to those expectations. 

Steve wanders the base when he’s not on duty, but it hasn’t felt like home during this deployment and all he can think about is heading back to New York.

Finally it’s January again, and the weather is much the same as when they had executed Operation Lemurian Star, one year ago. Cold snaps of wind carry fresh snow up the mountain, and soon the base is blanketed in thick, heavy drifts. 

A package Steve has been waiting for finally arrives and he tears it open without bothering to take off his snow caked boots as he throws himself onto his bunk. Against all odds, Bucky’s CFC files had made it before the end of his deployment.

Steve goes cold when he flips through the pages. Apparently, Bucky had been part of the breeding program since he was twelve years old. Steve doesn’t know why it’s a shock, doesn’t know why his throat closes and his eyes sting with the threat of tears. He knows cats are cycled in as soon as their heat seasons start, but somehow thinking about Bucky forced into some room with a stranger and expected to— 

Steve swallows, tries to skip ahead through the record to avoid those thoughts. No wonder Bucky hadn’t cared about how rough Brock had been. In the face of all that  _ control,  _ that must have tasted like so much  _ freedom. _

Bucky sired no kits, which is apparently exceptional for a male as virile as him (there had been many, many tests.) When he had been seventeen, Bucky was relegated to something called the non-breeders list but still had to report to the CFC when he went into heat. It made him disposable as far as the breeding program was concerned, which is why he hadn't been closely tracked when he came in for medical treatment.

That’s when Steve gets to Bucky’s last military record entry, and finally lets go of the hitch in his chest, allowing his tears fall freely onto his lap.

Apparently, Bucky had lost his arm.

If Steve had thought that Bucky vanishing into the darkness of the stairwell was the last time he’d ever see him, he would have told him something more meaningful than just “I trust you.” He would have told him it was a pleasure serving with him—no, an  _ honor.  _ He would have thanked him for his service. He would have told him he was sorry he pet his ears without asking his permission. He would have told him how lonely he’d be on Sakhalin without him, that really he looked forward to coming back every year because it meant they’d spend time together. He would have told him…

Steve throws the file across the small officer’s barracks and cries in earnest, silently, so that no one could possibly overhear him coming undone. 

Pretty soon, people notice anyway. 

Steve Rogers doesn’t know how to go down without a fight. He returns from deployment with the devil on his heels. He regularly gets sent to Colonel Danvers, minor infractions piling up around him as he makes more and more of a nuisance of himself. Patience long since evaporated, Steve manages to become a terror in personnel offices and feline directorates. He starts to hear words like “distracted” and “lack of decorum” and “that’s an  _ order,  _ Rogers” used towards him by his commanding officers.

He winds up blacklisted in certain offices within the CFC, and he earns his first demerit. His father calls him more often now, since the general has started hearing about his son’s temperament, even all the way in DC. Pretty soon after that, Steve earns a second demerit, then a third, and an exasperated Colonel Danvers warns him that he’s close to losing one of his bars.

Fuck her, Steve thinks. If she hadn’t blown him off when Bucky was first sent back to New York with a “minor damage,” none of this would have happened.

The months continue to roll by and Steve gets absolutely no closer to finding his missing cat. It’s everything he can do to keep his tone polite as he continues to ask, and ask, and ask.

Every single one of the people Steve speaks with swears they would “put in the order right away.” Every admin, every officer, every enlisted, every damn secretary will “look into it,” or “make some inquiries.” Every single one of them swears to call him back immediately, regardless of the outcome of their efforts to find one single humanoid feline within the massive apparatus of the United States Army.

They never do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter for The Stars Are Hiding, but have no fear, Something Wild Calls You Home continues in Part 2! Make sure to subscribe to the series for updates!
> 
> **Summary Preview:**
> 
> _Bucky’s barbed tongue slips out between two dry, pink lips and tastes the salty familiarity on Steve’s fingertips. The memory is distant, like a dream, and his left ear flicks as he lifts his head with renewed energy. “If it isn’t the Star Spangled Man With a Plan,” he croaks out, grinning wide enough to show his fangs._
> 
> _In which Captain Steve Rogers becomes the new owner of the disabled hunting cat who once saved his life, and learns that the price of freedom is higher for some people more than others._


	12. PREVIEW: Something Wild Calls You Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little preview for Part 2 of this series, the titular "Something Wild Calls You Home" 
> 
> Also, another piece of beautiful artwork!

#  Chapter 1: Five Years Later

Steve wakes up with a taste like rancid butter in his mouth, and an ache in his neck like he slept on a bed of elbows. 

Nope, he thinks. Just his couch again.

“Why do I even own a bed?” He asks the inside of his eyelids. He manages the monumental task of staggering out from under his jacket, kicking over no less than four bottles with various levels of beer still inside, and finding his phone without even opening them. He’d had quite a bit of practice navigating the minefield of his apartment since he moved to DC. 

Despite the chaos of his evenings, Steve still keeps to a meticulous schedule between 0900 and 1700. If he winds up in dereliction again the director would hear about it, so the general would hear about it, and then Steve would hear about it, and Steve had been pretty much  _ done  _ hearing about it, so he keeps to his routine, does his job, and saves his messes for off-duty hours. How he manages to wake up without a hangover every morning is anyone’s guess.

He oftentimes feels like he sleepwalks through all of it, so maybe it’s the repetition and a lifetime of training that gets him through the worst of his nightly mistakes. Today is no different. Up. Shower. Shave. Breakfast. Clean shorts, clean uniform slacks, clean uniform shirt, uniform service cap, uniform necktie in a crisp Windsor knot. He makes sure all the bling—the Joint Chiefs of Staff badge, rank, bars, blue infantry service rope and nameplate—are all perfectly aligned with a small ruler on his freshly pressed uniform jacket.

Steve’s fingers linger on the purple bar with gold edges in particular, and he doesn't think about Sakhalin.

**Read the rest in[Part 2: Something Wild Calls You Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9312707)!**  

* * *

 

INCREDIBLE artwork of Bucky fighting the Russian cat at the Sakhalin docks from [Superhuman Disasters](http://superhumandisasters.tumblr.com/post/155103357981/superheroresin-wrote-a-cap-au-featuring-a)! 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little story I have nagging at the back of my head. I swore I would finish off my [Patriotic Vice](http://archiveofourown.org/series/451753) series before I started sharing it but I got an itchy trigger finger. Unlike Patriotic Vice, this fic is already finished! I plan on posting a new chapter every week. Plenty of political intrigue, alternate universe world building and complicated species tension between humanoid felines and their human masters.
> 
> Come join me on [Tumblr](https://resinonao3.tumblr.com/) to chat about Stucky!


End file.
